Читать книгу The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 63

For a moment I thought I was back in Jallalabad, in that blissful awakening after the battle. There was a soft bed under me, sheets at my chin, and a cool breeze; I opened my eyes, and saw that it came from a porthole opposite me. That wasn’t right, though; no portholes in the Khyber country – I struggled with memory, and then a figure blocked the light, a huge figure in green sarong and sleeveless tunic, with a krees in his girdle, and fingering his earring as he stared down at me, his heavy brown face as hard as a curling-stone.

“You should have died,” says Don Solomon Haslam.

Just what an awakening invalid needs, of course, but it brought the nightmare flooding back – the reeking waters of the Skrang, the overwhelmed spy-boat, the dart in my side – I was conscious of a dull ache in my ribs, and of bandages. But where the d---l was I? In the Sulu Queen, sure enough, but even in that dizzy moment of waking I was aware that her motion was a slow, steady heave, there were no jungle noises, and the air blowing from the port was salt. I tried to speak, and my voice came in a parched croak.

“What … what am I doing here?”

“Surviving,” says he. “For the moment.” And then to my amazement he thrust his face into mine and snarled: “But you couldn’t die decently, could you? Oh no, not you! Hundreds perished in that river – but you survive! Every man of Paitingi’s – good men – Lingas who fought to the last – Paitingi himself, who was worth a thousand. All lost! But not you, blubbering in the water where my men found you! They should have left you to drown. I should have – bah!” He wheeled away, fuming.

Well, I hadn’t expected him to be pleased to see me, but even in my confused state so much passion seemed a mite unreasonable. Was I delirious? – but no, I felt not bad, and when I tried to ease myself up on the pillows I found I could do it without much discomfort; one doesn’t care to be raved at lying down, you understand. A hundred questions and fears were jumbled in my mind, but the first one was:

“How long have I been here?”

“Two weeks.” He eyed me malevolently. “And if you wonder where, the Sulu Queen is approximately ten south seventy east, heading west-sou’-west.” Then, bitterly: “What the d---l else was I to do, once those fools had hauled you from the water? Let you die of gangrene – treat you as you deserved? Ha! That was the one thing I could not do!”

Being still half-stupid with prolonged unconsciousness, I couldn’t make much of this. The last time I’d seen him, we’d been boon-companions, more or less, but since then he’d tried to murder me, kidnapped my wife, and turned out to be the arch-pirate of the Orient, which shed a different light on things. I tried to steady my whirling thoughts, but couldn’t. Anyway, he was obviously in a fearful wax because he’d felt obliged, G-d only knew why, not to let me perish of blow-pipe poison. Difficult to know what to say, so I didn’t.

“You can guess why you are alive,” says he. “It is because of her – whose husband you were.”

For a dreadful second I thought he meant she was dead; then my mind leaped to the conclusion that he meant he had taken her from me, and done the dirty deed on her – and at the very thought of my little Elspeth being abused by this vile nigger pirate, this scum of the East, my confusion and discretion vanished together in rage.

“You b----y liar! I am her husband! She’s my wife! You kidnapped her, you filthy pirate, and—”

“Kidnapped? Saved, you mean!” His eyes were blazing. “Rescued her from a mart – no, from a brute – who wasn’t fit to kiss her feet! Oh, no – it’s not kidnapping to take a pearl from a swine, who fouls her with his very touch, who treats her as a mere concubine, who betrays her—”

“It’s a lie! I—”

“Didn’t I see you with my own eyes? Coupling with that slut in my own library—”

“Drawing-room—”

“—that harlot Lade? Isn’t your name a byword in London for debauchery and vice, for every kind of lewdness and depravity?”

“Not every kind! I never—”

“A rake, a cheat, a bully and a whoremonger – that’s what I rescued that sweet, brave woman from. I took her from the hell of life with you—”

“You’re mad!” I croaked. “She never said it was hell! She loves me, curse you – as I love her—”

His hand swept across my face, knocking me back on my pillow, and I had sense enough to stay there, for he was a fearsome sight, shaking with fury, his mouth working.

“What did you ever know of love?” cries he. “Let me hear that word on your lips again, and I’ll have them sewn together, with a scorpion in your mouth!”

Well, when he put it like that, I saw there was no point in arguing. I lay there quaking, while he mastered himself and went on, more quietly:

“Love is not for animals like you. Love is what I felt – for the first time – on an afternoon at Lord’s, when I saw her. I knew then, as surely as I know there is One God, that there could be no other woman, that I should worship her for life, a life that would be death without her. Yes, I knew then – what love was.”

He let out a great breath, and he was trembling. By George, thinks I, we’ve got a maniac here – he means it. He heaved a minute, and then went on, like a poet on opium.

“She filled my life from that moment; there was nothing else. But it was a pure love – she would have been sacred to n e, had she been married to a husband truly worthy of her. But when I saw the truth – that she was shackled to the basest kind of brute” – he shot me a withering look – “I asked why my life, and hers (which was infinitely more precious) should be ruined by a stupid convention which, after all, meant nothing to me. Oh, I was a gentleman, trained in the English way, at an English school – but I was also a prince of the House of Magandanu, descended from the Prophet himself – and I was a pirate, as you of the West know the word. Why should I respect your customs; when I could offer her a destiny as high above life with you as the stars are above the slime, why should I hesitate? I could make her a queen, instead of the chattel of a drunken, licentious bully who had only married her at pistol point!”

“That ain’t fair! She was d----d glad to get me, and if that poxy little varmint Morrison says other – don’t hit me! I’m wounded!”

“Not by one word, by one gesture, did she complain! Her loyalty, like everything else about her, is perfect – even to a worm like you! But I knew, and I determined to save her for a love worthy of her. So I worked, carefully, patiently, for both our sakes – it was torture to impose on that sweet innocence, but I knew that in time she would bless me for the subterfuge. I was ready to sacrifice anything – millions, what were they to me? I, who was half of the East, half of the West, was prepared to put myself beyond the law, beyond civilization, for her sake. I would give her a throne, a fortune – and true love. For I still have my kingdom of the East, and she shall share it with me.”

Well, you won’t want me as British Ambassador, thinks I, but I kept mum, tactfully. He paced about the cabin, looking masterful as he prated on.

“So I took her, and I fought for her – in the face of that vicious madman Brooke! Oh, he’ll come too often to Borneo, that one, with his lying piety and promises – he that is the bloodiest pirate of us all! No doubt he made a fine pretext of rescuing her, so that he could come again and harry and burn us, butcher our people—” He was working into a fine froth now, waving his hands. “What’s it to him, how we live? What sacred right has he to war on us and our ways? I’d have eaten his fleet alive on the Skrang, but for Paitingi! As it was, I slipped him in the creeks and came downriver, with this one vessel. He thinks he’s finished Suleiman Usman, does he? Let him come to Maludu, when I return there!”

He paced some more, chewing over Brooke, and then rounded on me. “But he doesn’t matter – not now. You do. You’re here, and you’re inopportune.” He paused, considering me. “Yes … you should have died.”

I wished to G-d he’d stop harping on that – you could see where it was going to lead. This wasn’t Don Solomon of Brook Street any longer, not so you’d notice – this was a beastly aborigine who went plundering about in ships festooned with skulls, and I was an inconvenient husband, ’nuff said. In addition, he clearly had more screws loose than a drunk sapper – all that moonshine about worshipping Elspeth, not being able to live without her, making her a queen – well! It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been true; after all, when a man kidnaps a married woman and fights a war over her, it ain’t just a passing fancy.

But one thing was plain – his wooing hadn’t prospered, or I’d have been overside long ago, with a bag of coal round my ankles. Why the h--l couldn’t he have rattled her in London, and got tired of it, and we’d have been spared all this? But here we were, in a pickle whose delicacy made my flesh crawl. I considered, took a deep breath, and tried not to talk shrill.

“Well, now, Don Solomon,” says I, “I take note of what you’ve said, and – ah – I’m glad we’ve had this little prose together, you know, and you’ve told me – um – what you think. Yes – you’ve put it very fair, and while I can’t but deplore what you’ve done, mind – well, I understand your feelings, as any man of sensibility must – and I’m that, I hope – and I see you were deeply affected by … well, by my wife – and I know what it’s like, of course – I mean, she’s a little stunner, we agree-heavens yes,” I babbled on, while he gaped in bewilderment, small blame to him.

“But you’ve got it quite wrong you know; we’re a devoted couple, Elspeth – Mrs Flashman – and I, ask anyone – never a cross word – sublimely happy—”

“And that whore Lade?” he snarled. “Is that your devotion?”

“Why, my dear chap! The merest accident – I mean, that I noticed her at all – pure jealousy at seeing my wife flattered by your attentions – a man of your address, I mean, polished manners, charming, stinking rich – no, no, I mean, I found myself quite cut out – and Mrs Lade, well … heat of the moment – you know yourself how one can be carried away—”

It was touch and go that he didn’t savage me on the bed, considering the drivel I was talking – but it sometimes works, rubbish with a ring of sincerity, when you’re stuck with a hopeless case. It didn’t here; he strode to the bed, seized me by the shoulder, and drew back his great fist.

“You infernal liar!” cries he. “D’you think you can gammon me with your snivelling?”

“I’m not!” I bawled. “I love Elspeth, and she loves me, and you know it! She don’t want you!” I’d done it now, I could see, so I went roaring on: “That’s why you wish I’d died – because you know if you harm me now, your last hope of winning her is gone! Don’t – I’m an invalid – my wound!”

His fingers bit my shoulder like a vice; suddenly he flung me back and straightened up, with an ugly laugh.

“So that’s what you’re counting on! Why, you miserable toad, she doesn’t even know you’re here. I could drop you overboard, and she’d never know. Aye, you go pale at—”

“I don’t believe you! If that were true you’d have done me in already – you tried it in Singapore, rot you, with your foul black gangsters!”

He stared at me. “I’ve no notion what you’re talking about,” and he sounded sincere, curse him. “I don’t expect you to understand it, Flashman, but the reason you’re still alive is that I’m a man of honour. When I take her to her throne – and I shall – it will be with a clean hand, not one fouled with a husband’s blood – even a husband like you.”

That was reassuring enough to banish my immediate terrors; I even recovered sufficiently for a cautious sneer.

“Talk’s cheap, Solomon. Honour, says you – but you ain’t above wife-stealing, and cheating at cricket – oh, aye, breaking a chap’s wicket when you’ve laid him out foul! If you’re such a man of honour,” I taunted him, “you’d let Elspeth choose for herself – but you daren’t, ’cos you know she’d plump for me, warts and all!”

He stood stock still, just looking at me, without expression, fingering his earring again. Then after a moment, he nodded, slowly.

“Yes,” says he quietly. “It must come to that, must it not? Very well.”

He threw open the door, and barked an order, glancing oddly at me while we waited. Feet sounded – and I felt my heart begin to thump uncontrollably as I sat up in bed; G-d knows why, but I was suddenly dizzy – and then she was there in the doorway, and for a moment I thought it was someone else – this was some Eastern nymph, in a clinging sarong of red silk, her skin tanned to the gold of honey, whereas Elspeth’s was like milk. Her blonde hair was bleached almost white by the sun – and then I saw those magnificent blue eyes, round with bewilderment like her lips, and I heard a sob coming out of me: “Elspeth!”

She gave a little scream, and stumbled in the doorway, putting her hand to her eyes – and then she was running to my arms, crying “Harry! Oh, Harry!” flinging herself at me, her mouth against mine, clutching my head in wild hands, sobbing hysterically, and I forgot Solomon, and the ache of my wound, and fear, and danger, as I pressed that lovely softness against me and kissed and kissed her until she went suddenly limp, and slid from my arms to the floor in a dead faint. It was only then, as I scrambled out, clutching my bandaged side, that I realized the door was closed, and Solomon was gone.

I tried to haul her up to the bed, but I was still weak as a kitten from my wound and confinement, and couldn’t manage it. So I had to be content with pawing and fondling until her eyes fluttered open, and then she clung to me, muttering my name, and after we had babbled thankfully for a few minutes and exchanged our news, so to speak, we got down to the reunion in earnest – and in the middle of it, while I was just wondering if my wound was about to come asunder, she suddenly pulled her mouth free of mine and cried:

“Harry – what is Mrs Leo Lade to you?”

“Hey?” I yelped. “What? What d’ye mean? Who’s she? I mean—”

“You know her very well! The Duke’s … companion, who paid you such singular attention. What is between you?”

“Good G-d! At a time like this – Elspeth, my dear, what has Mrs Lade to do with anything?”

“That is what I am asking. No, desist – Don Solomon said … hinted … of an attachment. Is this true?”

You wouldn’t credit it – here she was, on a pirate ship, having been abducted, shanghaied round half the East, through war, ambush, and confounded head-hunters, reunited with her long-lost spouse, and just as he was proving his undying affection at grievous risk to his health, her jealous little pea-brain was off on another tack altogether. Unbelievable – and most unflattering. But I was equal to the occasion.

“Solomon!” cries I. “That viper! Has he been trying to poison your mind against me with his lies? I might have guessed it! Not content with stealing you, the villain traduces me to you – don’t you see? He’ll stop at nothing to win you away from me.”

“Oh.” She frowned up at me – G-d, she was lovely, if half-witted. “You mean he – oh, how could he be so base? Oh, Harry” – and she began to cry, trembling all down her body in a way that almost brought me to the boil – “all the rest I could bear – the fear and shame and … and all of it, but the thought that you might have been untrue … as he suggested – ah, that would have broken my heart! Tell me it wasn’t so, my love!”

“Course it wasn’t! Good l--d, that raddled pudding Lade! How could you think it? I despise the woman – and as though I could even look at her, or any other, when I have my own perfect, angelic, Aphrodite—” I tried a couple of cautious thrusts as I saw the suspicion dying in her eyes, but since attack’s the best form of defence I suddenly stopped, frowning thunderously. “That foul kite Solomon! He will stoop to any depth. Oh, dearest, I have been mad these past weeks – the thought of you in his clutches.” I gulped in manly torment. “Tell me – in your ordeal – did he … I mean – well … did he, the scoundrel?”

She was flushed with my attentions anyway, but at this she went crimson, and moaned softly, those innocent eyes brimming with tears.

“Oh, how can you ask? Would I be alive now, if … if … Oh, Harry, I cannot believe it is you, holding me safe! Oh, my love!”

Well, that was that settled (so far as it ever is with Elspeth; I’ve never been able to read those child-like eyes and butter-melting lips, so the d---l with it), and Mrs Lade disposed of, at least until we had finished the business in hand and were lying talking in the growing dusk of the cabin. Naturally, Elspeth’s story came flooding out in an excited stream, and I was listening with my mind in a great confusion, what with my weakened state, the crazy shock of our reunion, and the anxiety of our predicament – and suddenly, in the middle of describing the rations they’d fed her during her captivity, she suddenly said:

“Harry – you are sure you have not been astride Mrs Lade?”

I was so amazed she had to say it twice.

“Eh? Good G-d, girl, what d’you mean?”

“Have you mounted her?”

I can’t think how I’ve kept my sanity, talking to that woman for sixty years. Of course, at this time we’d only been married for five, and I hadn’t plumbed the depths of her eccentricity. I could only gargle and exclaim:

“D----t, I’ve told you I haven’t! And where on earth – it is shocking to use expressions of that kind!”

“Why? You use them – I heard you, at Lady Chalmers’, when you were talking to Jack Speedicut, and you were both remarking on Lottie Cavendish, and whatever her husband could see in such a foolish creature, and you said you expected he found her a good mount. I dare say I was not meant to hear.”

“I should think not! And I can have said no such thing – and anyway, ladies ain’t meant to understand such … such vulgar words.”

“The ladies who get mounted must understand them.”

“They ain’t ladies!”

“Why not? Lottie Cavendish is. So am I, and you have mounted me – lots of times.” She sighed, and nestled close, G-d help us.

“Well, I have not … done any such thing with Mrs Lade, so there.”

“I’m so glad,” says she, and promptly fell asleep.

Now, I’ve told you this, partly because it’s all of the conversation that I remember of that reunion, and also to let you understand what a truly impossible scatterhead Elspeth was – and still is. There’s something missing there; always has been, and it makes her senselessly unpredictable. (Heaven knows what idiocy she’ll come out with on her deathbed, but I’ll lay drunkard’s odds it’s nothing to do with dying. I only hope I ain’t still above ground to hear it, though.) She’d been through an ordeal that would have driven most women out of their wits – not that she had many to start with – but now she was back with me, safe as she supposed, she seemed to have no notion of the peril in which we both stood; why, when Solomon’s Malays took her away to her own quarters that first night, she was more concerned about the sunburn she’d taken, and if it would spoil her complexion, than about the fate Solomon might have in store for us. What can you do with a woman like that?

Mind you, there was a dead weight off my heart at having seen her, and knowing she’d come to no bodily harm. At least her captivity hadn’t changed her – come to think of it, if she’d wept and raved about her sufferings, or sat numb and shocked, or been terrified of her situation, like a normal woman – she wouldn’t have been Elspeth, and that would have been worse than anything, somehow.

For the next two days I was confined to my cabin, and didn’t see a living soul except the Chink steward who brought my food, and he was deaf to all my demands and questions. I’d no notion what was happening, or where we were going; I knew from what Solomon had said that we were in the South Indian Ocean, and the sun confirmed that we were westering steadily, but that was all. What did Solomon intend? – the one thing that grew on me was that he wasn’t likely to do me in, praise God, not now that Elspeth had seen me, for that would have scuppered any hopes he had of winning her. And that was the nub of it.

You see, lunatic though his behaviour had been, the more I thought about it the more I believed him: the blighter was really mad about her, and not just to board and scuttle her, either, but with all the pure, romantic trimmings, like Shelley or one of those chaps. Astonishing – well, I love her myself, always have, but not to put me off my food.

But Solomon had it to the point of obsession, where he’d been willing to kidnap and kill and give up civilization for her. And he’d believed that, in spite of his behaving like a b----y Barbary corsair, he could eventually woo and win her, given time. But then he’d seen her run to my arms, sobbing, and had realized it was no go; shocking blow it must have been. He’d probably been gnawing his futile passion ever since, realizing that he’d bought outlawry and the gallows for nothing. But what was he to do now? Unless he chopped us both (which seemed far-fetched, pirate and Old Etonian though he was) it seemed to me he had no choice but to set us free with apologies, and sail away, grief-stricken, to join the Foreign Legion, or become a monk, or an American citizen. Why, he’d as good as thrown up the sponge in letting Elspeth and me spend hours together alone; he’d never have done that if he hadn’t given up all hope of her, surely?

He was in no hurry to repeat his generosity, however. On the third day a little Chink doctor visited me with the steward, but he didn’t have a word of English, and busied himself impassively examining the sumpitan-wound in my guts – which was fairly healed, and barely ached – while remaining deaf to my demands to see Solomon. In the end I lost patience, and made for the door, roaring for attention, but at this two of the Malay crew appeared, all bulging muscles and evil phizzes, and indicated that if I didn’t hold my tongue they’d hold it for me. So I did, until they’d gone, and then I set about the door with my boots, bawling for Elspeth, and calling Solomon every name I could think of – indulging my natural insolence, if you like, since I figured it was safe enough. By George, wasn’t I young and innocent, though?

The response to that was nil, and an icy finger of fear traced down my back. For the past two days, with my belly still in a sling, it had seemed natural enough to be in the cabin – but now that the doctor had been, and seemed satisfied, why weren’t they letting me out – of why, at least, wasn’t Solomon coming to see me? Why weren’t they letting me see Elspeth? Why weren’t they letting me take exercise? It didn’t make sense, to keep me cooped here, if he was going to let us go, and – if he was going to let us go. It suddenly rushed in on me that that was pure assumption, probably brought on by my blissful reunion with Elspeth, which had been paradise after the weeks of peril and terror. Suppose I was wrong?

I don’t know anyone who despairs faster than I do – mind you, I’ve had cause – and the hours that followed found me in the depths. I didn’t know what to think or believe, my fears mounted steadily, and by next morning I was my normal self, in a state of abject funk. I was even drawing sinister significance from the fact that this cabin I was in was obviously in the forward part of the vessel, with the engines between me and the civilized quarters where Elspeth – and Solomon – would be. G-d, was he ravishing her, now that he knew he could never seduce her? Was he bargaining with her for my life, threatening to feed me to the sharks unless she buckled to with him? That was it, for certain – it’s what I’d have done in his place – and I tore my hair at the thought that like as not she’d defy him; she was forever reading trashy novels in which proud heroines drew themselves upright and pointed to the door, crying: “Do your worst, sinister man; my husband would die rather than be the price of my dishonour!” Would he, by jingo? – surrender, you stupid b---h, if that’s all he wants, I found myself muttering; what’s another more or less? Charming husband, ain’t I? Well, why not? Honour’s all very well, but life matters. Besides, I’d do the same to save Elspeth, if any lustful woman threatened me. They never do, though.

With such happy thoughts, in a torture of uncertainty, I passed the days that followed – how many I’m not sure, but I guess about a week. In all that time, no one came near me except the steward, with a Malay thug to back him up – I was alone, hour after hour, night after night, in that tiny box, alternating between shivering panic and black despair – not knowing. That was the worst of it; I didn’t even know what to be afraid of, and by the end of the week I was ready for anything, if it would only end my misery. It’s a dangerous state to be in, as I know, now that I’m old and experienced; I didn’t realize, then, that things can always get worse.

Then I saw the American ship, by chance, as I paced past my porthole. She was maybe half a mile off, a sleek black Southern Run clipper with Old Glory at her jackstaff; the morning sun was shining like silver on her topsails as they flapped from the reefs and were sheeted home. Now I’m no shellback, but I’d seen that setting a score of times, when a vessel was standing out from port – G-d, were we near some harbour of civilization, where the big ships ran? I hallooed for all I was worth, but of course they were too far off to hear, and then I was rummaging feverishly for matches to start a fire – anything to attract attention and bring that Yankee to my rescue. But of course I couldn’t find any; I nearly broke my neck trying to squint out of the port in search of land, but there was nothing but blue rollers, and the Yankee dwindling towards the eastern horizon.

All day I sat fretting, wondering, and then in mid-afternoon I saw little native craft from my port, and a low green mainland beyond them. Gradually a beach came into view, and a few huts, and then wooden houses with steep roofs – no flags, and nothing but niggers in loin-cloths – no, there was a uniform, an unmistakable navy coat, black with gold braid, and a cocked hat, among a group on a little jetty. But there was the rumble of the Sulu Queen’s cable – we were anchoring a good quarter of a mile out. Never mind, that was close enough for me; I was in a fever of excitement as I tried to figure where it might be – we’d been westering, Southern Indian Ocean, and here was a small port, still important enough for a Yankee clipper to touch. It couldn’t be the Cape, with that coastline. Port Natal – surely we weren’t that far west? I tried to conjure up the map of that huge sea east of Africa – of course, Mauritius! The navy coat, the niggers, the Arabi-looking small craft – they all fitted. And Mauritius was British soil.

I was trembling as I took stock. What the d---l was Solomon thinking of, putting into Mauritius? Wood and water – he’d probably had no chance of either since bolting from the Skrang. And with me cooped tight, and Elspeth probably likewise, what had he to fear? But it was my chance – there’d never be another like it. I could swim the distance easily … and the lock scraped in my door at that moment.

There are split seconds when you can’t afford to plan. I watched the steward setting down my tray, and without making a conscious decision I turned slowly towards the door where the Malay thug was hovering, beckoned him, and pointed, frowning, to the corner of the cabin. He advanced a pace, squinting up where I was pointing – and the next instant his courting tackle was half-way up inside his torso, impelled by my right boot, he was flying across the cabin, screaming, and Flashy was out and racing – where? There was a ladder, but I ducked past it instinctively, and tore along a short passage, the Chinese steward squealing in my rear. Round the corner – and there was a piece of open deck, Malays coiling rope, and iron doors flung wide to the sunshine and sea. As I ploughed through the startled Malays, scattering them, I had a glimpse of small craft between me and the shore, a distant jetty and palms, and then I was through those doors like a hot rivet, in an enormous dive, hitting the water with an almighty splash, gliding to the surface, and then striking out, head down, for dear life towards the distant land.

I reckon it took about ten seconds from my cabin to the water, and as many minutes before I was alongside the piles of the wharf. I was half-conscious with the exertion of my swim, and had to cling to the slimy wood while curious niggers in small boats drew up to gape at me, chattering like magpies. I looked back at the Sulu Queen, and there she was, riding peacefully, with a few native craft round her. I looked landward – there was the beach, and a fair-sized native town behind it, and a big building with a verandah and a flag-pole – it was a deuced odd-looking flag, striped and blazoned – some shipping line, perhaps. I hauled myself wearily along the piles, found a ladder, dragged myself up it, and lay panting and sodden on the wooden jetty, conscious of a small crowd forming round me. They were all niggers, in loin-cloths or white robes – some pretty Arab-looking, by their noses and head-gear. But there was the navy coat, pushing towards me, and the crowd falling back. I tried to pull myself up, but couldn’t, and then the navy trousers stopped beside me, and their owner was bending down towards me. I tried to control my panting.

“I’m … a British … army officer,” I wheezed. “Escaped from … that ship … pirate …” I raised my head, and the words died on my lips.

The fellow bending towards me was in full navy rig, right enough, even to the hat and epaulette – the green sash looked strange, though. But that wasn’t the half of it. The face beneath the cocked hat was jet black.

I stared at him, and he stared back. Then he said something, in a language I couldn’t understand, so I shook my head and repeated that I was an army officer. Where was the commandant? He shrugged, showed his yellow teeth in a grin, and said something, and the crowd giggled.

“D--n your eyes!” cries I, struggling up. “What the h--l’s going on here? Where’s the harbour-master? I’m a British army officer, Captain Flashman, and—” I was stabbing him on the chest with my finger, and now, to my utter amazement, he struck my hand angrily aside and snapped something in his heathen lingo, right in my face! I fell back, appalled at the brute’s effrontery – and then there was a commotion behind, and I looked to see a small boat ploughing up at the seaward end of the jetty, and Solomon, of all people, springing from her bows and striding towards us along the planking, a massive figure in his tunic and sarong, with a face like thunder. Right, my hearty, thinks I, this is where you receive your ration allowance, once these people realize you’re a b----y pirate, and I flung out a hand to denounce him to my epauletted nigger. But before I could get a word out Solomon had seized me by the shoulder and spun me round.

“You infernal fool!” cries he. “What have you done?”

You can be sure I told him, a trifle incoherently, at the top of my voice, drawing the nigger’s attention to the fact that here was the notorious pirate and brigand, Suleiman Usman, delivered into his hands, and would he mind arresting him and his ship and restoring me and my wife to liberty.

“And you can swing till the crows peck you, you kidnapping tyke!” I informed Solomon. “You’re done for.”

“In G-d’s name, where d’you think you are?” His voice was shrill.

“Mauritius, ain’t it?”

“Mauritius?” He suddenly pulled me aside. “You booby, this is Tamitave – Madagascar!”

Well, that startled me, I admit. It explained the nigger in uniform, I supposed, but I couldn’t see it made much difference. I was saying so, when the nigger stepped up and addressed Solomon, pretty sharp, and to my amazement the Don shrugged, apologetically, as though it had been a white official, and replied in French! But it was his abject tone as much as the language that bewildered me.

“Your pardon, excellency – a most unfortunate mistake. This man is one of my crew – a little drunk, you understand. With your permission I shall take him—”

“Balderdash!” I roared. “You’ll take me nowhere, you lying dago!” I swung to the nigger. “You speak French, do you? Well, so do I, and I’m no more one of his crew than you are. He’s a d----d pirate, who has abducted me and my wife—”

“Be quiet, you clown!” cries Solomon in English, thrusting me aside. “You’ll destroy us! Leave him to me,” and he began to patter to the black again, in French, but the other silenced him with a flap of his hand.

“Silence,” says he, as if he were the b----y Duke. “The commandant approaches.”

Sure enough, there was a file of soldiers coming from the landward end of the jetty, strapping blacks in white loin-cloths and bandoliers, with muskets at the shoulder. And behind them, carried by coolies in an open sedan, came an unbelievable figure. It is solemn truth – he was black as your boot, and he wore a turban on his head, a flowered red and yellow shirt, and a 42nd Highlanders kilt. He had sandals on his feet, a sabre at his hip, white gloves, and a rolled brolly in his hand. I’ve gone mad, thinks I; it’s been the strain, or the sun. That thing can’t be real.

Solomon was hissing urgently in my ear. “Don’t say a word! Your one chance is to pretend to be one of my crew—”

“Are you mad?” says I. “After what you’ve done, you—”

“Please!” And unless my ears deceived me he was pleading. “You don’t understand – I intend you no harm – you shall both go free – Mauritius, if I can do it safely – I swear—”

“You swear! D’you imagine I’d trust you for an instant?”

And then the black’s voice, speaking harsh French, cut across his reply.

“You.” He was pointing at me. “You say you were a prisoner on that ship. And you are English. Is it so?”

I looked at the commandant, leaning forward from his sedan in that ludicrous Hallowe’en rig, his great ebony head cocked on one side, bloodshot eyes regarding me. As I nodded in reply to the officer’s question, the commandant took a peeled mango from one of his minions and began to cram it into his mouth, juice spurting over his gloved hand and over his ridiculous kilt. He tossed the stone away, wiped his hand on his shirt, and said in careful French, in a croaking rasp:

“And your wife, you say, is also a prisoner of this man?”

“Pardon, excellency.” Solomon pushed forward. “This is a great misunderstanding, as I have tried to explain. This man is of my ship’s company, and is covered by my safe-conduct and trading licence from her majesty. I beg you to allow—”

“He denies it,” croaked the commandant. He cleared his throat and spat comprehensively, hitting one of the soldiers on the leg. “He swam ashore. And he is English.” He shrugged. “Shipwrecked.”

“Oh, Ch---t,” muttered Solomon, licking his lips.

The commandant wagged a finger the size of a black cucumber, peering at Solomon. “He is plainly not covered by your licence or safe-conduct. Nor is his wife. That licence, Monsieur Suleiman, does not exempt you from Malagassy law, as you should know. It is only by special favour that you yourself escape the fanompoana – what you call … corvée?” He gestured at me. “In his case, there is no question.”

“What the dooce is he talking about?” says I to Solomon. “Where’s the British consul? I’ve had enough—”

“There’s no such thing, you fool!” Solomon was positively wringing his hands; suddenly he was a fat, frightened man. “Excellency, I implore you to make an exception – this man is not a castaway – I can swear he intended no harm in her majesty’s dominions—”

“He will do none,” says the commandant and jabbered curtly at the officer. “He is lost” – a phrase whose significance escaped me just then. The coolies lifted the sedan, and away it swayed, the officer barked an order, and a file of his soldiers trotted past us, their leader bawling to one of the boatmen, summoning his craft to the jetty.

“No – wait!” Solomon’s face was contorted with anguish. “You idiot!” he shrieked at me, and then he started first this way and that, calling to the commandant, and then running down the jetty after the file of soldiers. The black officer laughed, indicated me, and snapped an order to two of his men. It wasn’t till they grabbed my arms and began to run me off the jetty that I came to my senses; I roared and struggled, bawling for Solomon, shouting threats of what would happen to them for laying their filthy hands on an Englishman. I lashed out, and a musket-butt sprawled me half-conscious on the planking. Then they dragged me up, and one of them, his great black face blasting foul breath all over me, snapped shackles on my wrists; they seized the chain and hauled me headlong up the street, with the blacks eyeing me curiously and children running alongside, squealing and laughing.

That was how I became a captive in Madagascar.

As you know – or rather, you don’t, but if you’re intelligent you’ll have guessed – I’m a truthful man, at least where these memoirs are concerned. I’ve got nothing to lie for any longer, who lied so consistently – and successfully – all my life. But every now and then, in writing, I feel I have to remind you, and myself, that what I tell you is unvarnished fact. There are things that strain belief, you see, and Madagascar was one of them. So I will only say that if, at any point, you doubt what follows, or think old Flash is telling stretchers, just go to your local libraries, and consult the memoirs of my dear old friend Ida Pfeiffer, of the elastic-sided boots, or Messrs Ellis and Oliver, or the letters of my fellow-captives, Laborde of Bombay and Jake Heppick the American shipmaster, or Hastie the missionary.³³ Then you’ll realize that the utterly unbelievable things I tell you of that h--lish island, straight out of “Gulliver”, are simple, sober truth. You couldn’t make ’em up.

Now I won’t bore you by describing the shock and horror I experienced, either at the beginning, when I realized I had escaped from Solomon’s frying-pan into something infinitely worse, or later, as further abominations unfolded. I’ll just recount what I saw and experienced, as plain as I can.

My first thoughts, when they threw me chained and battered, into a stuffy go-down at Tamitave, were that this must be some bad dream from which I should soon awake. Then my mind turned to Elspeth; from what had passed on the jetty it had seemed that they’d been going to drag her ashore, too – for what fate I could only guess. You see, I was at a complete nonplus, quite out of my depth; once I’d had my usual little rave and blubber to myself, I tried to remember what Solomon had told me about Madagascar on the voyage out, which hadn’t been much, and what I recalled was far from comforting. Wild and savage beyond description, he’d said … weird customs and superstitions … half the population in slavery … a she-monster of a queen who aped European fashions and held ritual executions by the thousand … a poisonous hatred of all foreigners – well, my present experience confirmed that, all right. But could it truly be as awful as Solomon had painted it? I hadn’t believed him above half, but when I thought of that frightful nigger commandant in his bumbee tartan kilt and brolly … well.

Fortunately for my immediate peace of mind I didn’t know one of the worst things about Madagascar, which was that once you were inside it, you were beyond hope of rescue. Even the most primitive native countries, in my young days, were at least approachable, but not this one; its capital, Antananarivo (Antan’, to you), might as well have been on the moon. There was no appeal to outside, or even communication; no question of Pam or the Frogs or Yanks sending a gunboat, or making diplomatic representations, even. You see, no one knew about Madagascar, hardly. Barring a few pirates like Kidd and Avery in the old days, and a handful of British and French missionaries – who’d soon been cleared out or massacred – no one had visited it much except heeled-and-ready traders like Solomon, and they walked d----d warily, and did their business from their own decks offshore. We’d had a treaty with an earlier Malagassy king, sending him arms on condition that he stopped slave-trading, but when Queen Ranavalona came to the throne (by murdering all her relatives) in 1828, she’d broken off all traffic with the outside world, forbidden Christianity and tortured all converts to death, revived slavery on a great scale, and set about exterminating all tribes except her own. She was quite mad, of course, and behaved like Messalina and Attila the Hun, either of whom would have taken one look at her and Written to The Times, protesting.

To give you some notion of the kind of blood-stained bedlam the country was, she’d already slaughtered one-half of her subjects, say a million or so, and passed decrees providing for a wall round the whole island to keep out foreigners (it would only have had to be three thousand miles long), four gigantic pairs of scissors to be set up on the approaches to her capital, to snip invaders in two, and the building of massive iron plates from which the cannon-shots of European ships would rebound and sink them. Eccentric, what? Of course, all this was unknown to me when I landed; I began to find out about it, painfully, when they hauled me out of the cooler next morning, still – in my innocence – protesting and demanding to see my lawyer.

My French-speaking officer had disappeared, so all my entreaties earned was blows and kicks. I’d had no food or drink for hours, but now they gave me a stinking mess of fish, beans, and rice, and a leaf-spoon to eat it with. I gagged it down with the help of their vile brown rice-water, and then, despite my objections, I and a gang of other unfortunates, all black of course, were herded up through the town, heading inland.

Tamitave’s not much of a settlement. It has a fort, and a few hundred wooden houses, some of them quite large, with the high-pitched Malagassy thatches. At first sight it looks harmless enough, like the people: they’re black, but not Negro, I’d say, perhaps a touch of Malay or Polynesian, well-built, not bad-looking, lazy, and stupid. The folk I saw at first were poorer-class peasants, slaves, and provincials, both men and women wearing simple loin-cloths or sarongs, but occasionally we encountered one of the better-off, being toted about in a sedan – no rich or aristocratic Malagassy will walk a hundred yards, and there’s a multitude of slaves, bearers, and couriers to carry ’em. The nobs wore lambas – robes not unlike Roman togas, although in Antan’ itself their clothing was sometimes of the utmost outlandish extravagance, like my commandant. That’s the extraordinary thing about Madagascar – it’s full of parodies of the European touch gone wrong, and their native culture and customs are bizarre enough to start with, G-d knows.

For example, they have their markets at a distance from their villages and towns – nobody knows why. They hate goats and pigs, and will lay babies out in the street to see if their births are “fortunate” or not;³⁴ they are unique, I believe, in the whole world in having no kind of organized religion – no priests, no shrines or temples – but they worship a tree or a stone if they feel like it, or personal household gods called sampy, or charms, like the famous idol Rakelimalaza, which consists of three dirty little bits of wood wrapped in silk – I’ve seen it. Yet they’re superstitious beyond belief, even to the extent of dispraising those things they value most, to avert jealous evil spirits, and believing that when a man is dying you must stuff his mouth with food at the last minute – mind you, that may be because they’re the most amazing gluttons, and drunkards, too. But, as with so many of their practices, you sometimes feel they are just determined to be different from the rest of the world.

I noticed that the soldiers who escorted our chain-gang were of a different stamp from the rest of the people – tall, narrow-headed fellows who marched in step, to a mixture of English and French words of command. They were brutes, who thrashed us along if we lagged, and treated the populace like dirt. I learned later they were from the Queen’s tribe, the Hovas, once the pariahs of the island, but now dominant by reason of their cunning and cruelty.

I’ve endured some horrible journeys in my time – Kabul to the Khyber, Crimea to Middle Asia, for a couple – but I can’t call to mind anything worse than that march from Tamitave to Antan’. It was 140 miles, and it took us eight days of blistered feet and chafing chains, trudging along, at first over scrubby desert, then through open fields, with peasants stopping in their work to stare at us indifferently, then through forest country, with the great jungly mountains of the interior coming slowly closer. We passed mud-walled villages and farms, but at night our captors just made us lie and sleep where we stopped; they carried no rations, but took what they wanted from unprotesting villagers, and we prisoners got the scraps. We were sodden by rain, burned agonizingly by the sun, bitten raw by mosquitoes, punished by blows and welts – but the worst of it was ignorance. I didn’t know where I was, where I was going, what had happened to Elspeth, or even what was being said around me. There was nothing for it but to be herded on, like an animal, in pain and despair. After the first day or so I was beyond thought; all that mattered was survival.

To make matters worse, there was no road to travel – oh no, the Malagassies won’t have ’em, for fear they might be used by an invader. Examine the perverse logic of that, if you like. The only exception is when the Queen travels anywhere, in which case they build a road in front of her, mile by mile, twenty thousand slaves grubbing with picks and rocks, and a great army following, with the court; why, every night they build a town, walls and all, and then leave it empty next day.

We were privileged to see this, when we reached the high plain midway on our journey, The first thing I noticed was dead bodies scattered about the place, and then groups of wailing, exhausted natives along our line of march. They were the road-builders; there were no rations provided for ’em, you see, so they just fell out and died like flies. This was the Queen’s annual buffalo-hunt, and ten thousand slaves perished on it, inside a week. The stench was indescribable, especially along the road itself – which cut perversely across our line of march – where they were lying in rows, men, women, and children. Some of them would haul themselves up as we passed, and crawl towards us, whimpering for food; the Hovas just kicked them aside.

To add to the horrors, we passed occasional gallows, on which victims were hung or crucified, or simply tied to die by inches. One abomination I’ll never forget – five staggering skeletons yoked together at the neck by a great iron wheel. They put them in it, and turn them loose, wandering together, until they starve or break each other’s necks.

The Queen’s procession had passed by long before, up the rough, rock-paved furrow of the road which ran straight as a die through forest and over mountain. She had twelve thousand troops with her, I learned later, and since the Malagassy army has no system of supply or rations they had just picked the country clean, so in addition to the slaves, thousands of peasants starved to death as well.

You may wonder why they endured it. Well, they didn’t, always. Over the years thousands had fled, in whole tribes and communities, to escape her tyranny, and the jungles were full of these people, living as brigands. She sent regular expeditions against them, as well as against those distant tribes who weren’t Hovas; I’ve heard it reckoned that the slaughter of fugitives, criminals, and those whom her majesty simply disliked, amounted to between twenty and thirty thousand annually, and I believe it. (Far better, of course, than wicked colonial government by Europeans – or so the Liberals would have us believe. G-d, what I’d have given to get Gladstone and that pimp Asquith on the Tamitave road in the earlies; they’d have learned all they needed to know about “enlightened rule by the indigenous population”. Too late now, though; nothing for it but to hire a few roughs to smash windows at the Reform Club – as though I care.)

In the meantime, I’d little sympathy to spare; my own case, as we finally approached Antan’ after more than a week of tortured tramping, was deplorable. My shirt and trousers were in rags, my shoes were worn out, I was bearded and foul – but strangely enough, having plumbed the depths, I was beginning to perk up a trifle. I wasn’t dead, and they weren’t bringing me all this way to kill me – I was even feeling a touch of light-headed recklessness, probably with hunger. I was lifting my head again, and my recollections of the end of the march are clear enough.

We passed a great lake along the road, and the guards made us shout and sing all the way past it; I later heard it was to placate the ghost of a dissolute princess buried nearby – dissolute female royalty being Madagascar’s strong suit, evidently. We crossed a great river – the Mangaro – and steaming geysers bubbling out of pools of boiling mud, before we came out on a level grass plain, and beyond it, on a great hill, we beheld Antananarivo.

It took my breath away – of course, I didn’t even know what it was, then, but it was like nothing you’d expect in a primitive nigger country. There was this huge city of houses, perhaps two miles across, walled and embattled in wood, and dominated by a hill on the top of which stood an enormous wooden palace, four storeys high, with another building alongside it which seemed to be made of mirrors, for it shimmered bright as a burning-glass in the sunlight. I stared at it until I was almost blinded, but I couldn’t make out what it was – and in the meantime there were other wonders closer at hand, for as we approached the city across the plain which was dotted with huts and crowded with village people, I thought I must be dreaming – in the distance I could hear a military band playing, horribly flat, but there could be no doubt that the tune was “The Young May Moon"! And here, sure enough, came a regiment in full fig – red tunics, shakos, arms at the shoulder, bayonets fixed, and every man-jack of them black as Satan. I stood and fairly gaped; past they went in column, throwing chests, and shaping dooced well – and at their head, G-d help me, half a dozen officers on horseback, dressed as Arabs and Turks. I was beyond startling now – when a couple of sedans, draped in velvet, passed by bearing black women done up in Empire dresses and feathered hats, I didn’t even give ’em a second glance. They, and the rest of the crowds, were moving across the front of the city, and that was the way our guards drove us, so that we skirted the city wall until we came presently to a great natural amphitheatre in the ground, dominated by a huge cliff – Ambohipotsy, they call it, and there can be no more accursed place on earth.

There must have been close on a quarter of a million people thronging the slopes of that great hollow below the cliff – certainly more than I’ve ever seen in one congregation. This great tide of black humanity was gazing down to the foot of the cliff; our guards brought us up short and pointed, grinning, and looking down that vast slope of people I saw that in a clear space long narrow pits had been dug, and in the pits were scores of human beings, tied to stakes. At the end of each pit huge cauldrons were fixed, above roaring fires, and even as we watched a gong boomed out, the enormous chattering crowd fell silent, and a gang of black fiends tilted the first of the cauldrons, slowly, slowly, while the poor devils in the pits shrieked and writhed; boiling water slopped over the cauldron’s lip, first in a small stream, then in a scalding cascade, surging down into the pit with a horrible sizzling cloud of steam that blotted out the view. When it cleared I saw to my horror that it only filled the pit waist deep – the victims were boiling alive by inches, while the onlookers bayed and cheered in a tumult of sound that echoed across that ghastly amphitheatre of death. There were six pits; they filled them one by one.

That was the main performance, you understand. After that, figures appeared at the top of the cliff, which was three hundred feet up, and the luckier condemned were thrown off, the crowd giving a great rising whistle as each struggling body took flight, and a mighty howl when it struck the ground below – there was particular applause if one landed in the water-pits, which were still steaming mistily with the contorted figures hanging from their stakes. They didn’t just throw the condemned people down the cliff, by the way – they suspended ’em first by ropes, to let the mob have a good look, and then cut them free to drop.

I make no comment myself – because as I watched this beastly spectacle I seemed to hear the voice of my little Newgate friend in my ear – “Interesting, isn’t it?” – and see again the yelling, gloating audience outside the Magpie and Stump; they were much the same, I suppose, as their heathen brethren. And if you tell me indignantly that hanging is a very different thing from boiling alive – or burning, flaying, flogging, sawing, impaling, and live burial, all of which I’ve seen at Ambohipotsy – I shall only remark that if these spectacles were offered in England it would be a case of “standing room only” – for the first few shows, anyway.

However, if the relation of such atrocities nauseates you,³⁵ I can only say that I swore to tell the truth of what I saw, and any qualms you may suffer were as nothing to poor old Flashy’s mental distress as we were herded away from the scene of execution – I’ll swear we were only there because our guards didn’t want to miss it – and through one of the massive gates into Antan’ town proper. Its name, by the way, means “City of a Thousand Towns”, and it was as impressive at first hand as it had been from a distance. Wide, clean streets were lined by fine wooden buildings, some of them two and three storeys high (all building must be of wood, by law) and starved and shaken with terror as I was, I could not but marvel at the air of richness there was about the place. Well-stocked booths, shady avenues, neatly-robed folk bustling about their business, expensively-carved and painted sedans swaying through the streets, carrying the better sort, some in half-European clobber, others in splendid sarongs, and lambas of coloured silk. There was no making sense of it – on the one hand, the horrors I had just watched, and on the other this pleasant, airy, civilized-looking city – with Captain Harry Flashman and friends being kicked and flogged through the middle of it, and no one giving us more than a casual glance. Oh, aye – every building had a European lightning conductor.

They locked us in an airy, reasonably clean warehouse for the night, took off our fetters, and gave us our first decent meal for a week – a spicy mutton stew, bread and cheese, and more of their infernal rice-piddle. We scoffed it like wolves – a dozen woolly niggers snuffling over their bowls and one English gentleman dining with refinement, I don’t think. But if it did something for my aching, filthy body, it did nothing for my spirits – this nightmare of existence seemed to have endured forever, and it was mad, incredible, out of all reason. But I must hang on – I had played cricket once, and bowled Felix; I had been to Rugby, and Horse Guards, and Buckingham Palace; I had an address in Mayfair; I had dined at White’s – as a guest, granted – and strolled on Pall Mall. I wasn’t just a lost soul in a lunatic black world, I was Harry Flashman, ex-11th Hussars, four medals and Thanks of Parliament, however undeserved. I must hang on – and surely, in the city I’d seen, there must be some civilized person in authority who spoke French or English, to whom I could state my case and receive the treatment that was my due as a British officer and citizen. After all, they weren’t real savages, not with streets and buildings like these – a touch colourful in the way they disposed of malefactors, no doubt, and no poor relief worth a d--n, but no society’s perfect. I must talk to someone.

The difficulty was – who? When they turned us out next morning, we were taken in charge by a couple of black overseers, who spoke nothing but jabber; they thrust us along a narrow alley, and out into a crowded square in which there was a long platform, railed off to one side, with guards stationed at its corners, to keep the mob back. It looked like a public meeting; there were a couple of black officials on the platform, and two more seated at a small table before it. We were pushed up a flight of steps to the platform, and made to stand in line; I was still blinking from the sunlight, wondering what this might portend, as I looked out over the crowd – blacks in lambas and robes for the most part, a few knots of officers in comic-opera uniforms, plenty of sedans with wealthy Malagassies sitting under striped umbrellas. I scanned the faces of the officers eagerly; those would be the French-speakers, and I was just about to raise a halloo to attract their attention when a face near the front of the crowd caught my eye like a magnet, and my heart leaped with excitement.

He was a tall man, wide-shouldered but lean, wearing a bright embroidered shirt under a blue broadcloth coat, and with a silk scarf tied like a cravat; he and his neighbour, a portly sambo resplendent in sarong and cocked hat, were taking snuff in the local fashion, the lean chap accepting a pinch from the other’s box on the palm of his hand and engulfing it with a quick flick of his tongue (it tastes beastly, I can tell you). He grimaced and raised his eyes; they met mine, and stared – they were bright blue eyes, in a face burned brown under a mane of greying hair. But there was no doubt of it – he was a white man.

“You!” I roared. “You, sir! Monsieur! Parlez-vous français? anglais? Hindi? Latin? B----y Greek, even? Listen to me – I must talk to you!”

One of the guards was striding forward to thrust me back, but the lean man was pushing his way through the mob, to my unutterable relief, and at a word from him to the officials he was allowed to approach the platform. He looked up at me, frowning, as I knelt down to be close to him.

“Français?” says he.

“I’m English – a prisoner, from a boat that came in at Tamitave! In G-d’s name, how can I get out of this? No one listens to me – they’ve been dragging me all over the bl----d country for weeks! I must—”

“Gently, gently,” says he, and at the sound of the English words I could have wept. Then: “Smile, monsieur. Smile-what is the word – broadly? Laugh, if you can – but converse quietly. It is for your own good. Now, who are you?”

I didn’t understand, but I forced a ghastly grin, and told him who I was, what had happened, and my total ignorance of why I’d been brought here. He listened intently, those vivid eyes playing over my face, motioning me to speak softly whenever my voice rose – which, as you can imagine, it tended to do. All the time he was plainly avoiding glancing at my guards or the officials, but he was listening for them. When I had finished he fingered his cravat, nodding, as though I’d been telling him the latest for “Punch”, and smiling pleasantly.

“Eh bien,” says he. “Now attend, and not interrupt. If my English she is not perfect, I use French, but better not. No? Whatever I say, betray no amaze’, do you see? Smile, if you please. Good. I am Jean Laborde, once of the Emperor’s cavalry. I have been here thirteen years, I am a citizen. You do not know Madagascar?”

I shook my head, and he put back his head and laughed softly, plainly for the onlookers’ benefit.

“They detest all Europe, and English especially. Since you land without permission, they treat you as naufragé – how you call? – shipwreck? Castaway? By their law – please to smile, monsieur, very much – all such persons must be made slaves. This is a slave-market. They make you a slave – forever.”

The smiling brown face with its blue eyes swam in front of me; I had to hold on to the edge of the platform. Laborde was speaking again, quickly, and the smile had vanished.

“Say nothing. Wait. Wait. Do not despair. I will make inquiry. I see you again. Only wait, don’t despair. Now, my friend – forgive me.”

On the heels of the last word he suddenly shouted something in what I took to be Malagassy, gesturing angrily. Heads came round, my guard stooped and wrenched at my shoulder, and Laborde struck me full in the face with his open hand.

“Scélérat!” he cried. “Canaille!” He swung angrily on his heel and pushed his way back into the grinning crowd, while the guard kicked me upright and thrust me back into line. I tried to call to Laborde, but I was choked with horror and my own tears, and then one of the officials mounted a rostrum, shouting an announcement, the chatter of the crowd died away, the first of our coffle was pushed forward, and the bidding began.