'Come along, come along, come along,' says I. 'What are we about, then? The brutes'll be sounding reveille in a moment.'
'Patience, blood brother,' says he, giving me a puzzled look, and then a grin. 'You shall have your rockets at their throats presently. God keep you. Kutebar, preserve that worthless carcase if you can, and you, beloved Silk One -' he reached out and pressed her head to his breast, whispering to her. Bully for some, thinks I: wonder if you can do it on a trotting horse? Have to try some time—and then Yakub was calling softly into the dark.
'In the name of God and the Son of God! Kirgiz, Uzbek, Tajik, Kalmuk, Turka—remember Ak Mechet! The morning rides behind us!' And he made that strange, moaning Khokand whistle, and with a great rumbling growl and a drumming of hooves the whole horde went surging forward beneath the trees and out on to the empty steppe towards Fort Raim.
If I'd been a sentry on those walls I'd have had apoplexy. One moment an empty steppe, and the next it was thick with mounted men, pouring down on the fort; we must have covered a quarter of a mile before the first shot cracked, and then we were tearing at full tilt towards the gap between fort and river, with the shouts of alarm sounding from the walls, and musketry popping, and then with one voice the yell of the Ghazi war-cry burst from the riders (one voice, in fact, was crying 'Tally-ho! Ha-ha!'), five thousand mad creatures thundering down the long slope with the glittering sea far ahead, and the ships riding silent and huge on the water, and on to the cluttered beach, with men scattering in panic as we swept in among the great piles of bales, sabring and shooting, leaping crazily in the gloom over the boxes and low shelters, Yakub's contingent streaming out to the left among the sheds and go-downs, while our party and Sahib Khan's drove for the pier.
God, what a chaos it was! I was galloping like a dervish at Kutebar's heels roaring 'Hark forrard! Ha, ha, you bloody foreigners, Flashy's here!', careering through the narrow spaces between the sheds, with the muskets banging off to our left, startled sleepers crying out, and everyone yelling like be-damned. As we burst headlong onto the last stretch of open beach, and swerved past the landward end of the pier, some stout Russian was bawling and letting fly with a pistol; I left off singing 'Rule, Britannia' to take a shot at him, but missed, and there ahead someone was waving a torch and calling, and suddenly there were dark figures all around us, clutching at our bridles, almost pulling us from the saddles towards a big go-down on the north side of the pier.
I was in capital fettle as I strode into the go-down, which was full of half-naked natives with torches, all in a ferment of excitement.
'Now, then, my likely lads,' cries I, 'where are these Congreves, eh? Look alive, boys, we haven't got all night, you know.'
'Here is the devil-fire, oh slayer of thousands,' says someone, and there sure enough was a huge pile of boxes, and in the smoky torchlight I could see the broad arrow, and make out the old familiar lettering on them: 'Royal Small Arms Factory. Handle with Extreme Care. Explosives. Danger. This side up.'
'And how the deuce did this lot get here, d'ye suppose?' says I to Kutebar. 'Depend upon it, some greasy bastard in Birmingham with a pocketful of dollars could tell us. Right-o, you fellows, break 'em out, break 'em out!' And as they set to with a will, I gave them another chorus of 'John Peel' and strode to the sea end of the go-down, which of course was open, and surveyed the bay.
Ko Dali's daughter was at my elbow, with a chattering nigger pointing out which ship was which. There were two steamers, the farther one being the Obrtucheff, three vessels with masts, of which the Mikhail was farthest north, and a ketch, all riding under the moon on the glassy sea, pretty as paint.
'That's the ticket for soup!' says I. 'We'll have 'em sunk in half a jiffy. How are you, my dear—I say, that's a fetching rig you're wearing!' And I gave her a squeeze for luck, but she wriggled free.
'The firing-frame, angliski you must direct them,' says she, and I turned reluctantly from surveying the bay and listening to the war that was breaking out along the beach—hell of a din of shooting and yelling, and it stirred my blood to action. I strode in among the toilers, saw the firing-frame broken from its crate, and showed them where to position it, at the very lip of the go-down, just above the small boats and barges which were rocking gently at their moorings on the water six feet below our feet.
Putting up the frame was simple—it's just an iron fence, you see,. with supports both sides, and half-pipes running from the ground behind to the top of the fence, to take the rockets. I've never known my fingers so nimble as I tightened the screws and adjusted the half-pipes in their sockets; everyone else seemed slow by comparison, and I cursed them good-naturedly and finally left Ko Dali's daughter to see to the final adjustments while I went off to examine the rockets.
They had them broken out by now, the dull grey three-foot metal cylinders with their conical heads—I swore when I saw that, as I'd feared, they were the old pattern, without fins and needing the fifteen-foot sticks. 43 Sure enough, there were the sticks, in long canvas bundles; I called for one, and set to work to fit it into a rocket head, but the thing was corroded to blazes.
'Now blast these Brummagem robbers!' cries I. 'This is too bad—see how British workmanship gets a bad name! At this rate the Yankees will be streets ahead of us. Break out another box!'
'Burst it open! off with the lid, sons of idleness!' bawls Kutebar, fuming with impatience. 'If it was Russian gold within, you'd have them open fast enough!'
'They will open in God's time, father of all wisdom,' says one of the riders. 'See, there they lie, like the silver fish of See-ah—are they not pretty to behold?'
'Prettier yet when they strike those Ruski ships of Eblis!' roars Kutebar. 'Bring me a stick that I may arm one of these things! What science is here! Wisdom beyond that of the great astronomer of Samarkand has gone to the making of these fine instruments. I salute you, Flashman bahadur, and the genius of your infidel professors of Anglistan. See, there it stands, ready to blow the sons of pigs straight up Shaitan's backside!' And he flourished the stick, with the rockethead secured—upside down, which made me laugh immoderately.
I was interrupted by the Silk One, tugging urgently at my sleeve, imploring me to hurry—I couldn't see what all the fuss was, for I was enjoying things thoroughly. The battle was going great guns outside, with a steady crackle of gunfire, but no regular volleys, which meant, as I pointed out, that the Ruskis hadn't come to order yet.
'Lots of time, darling,' I soothed her. 'Now, how's the frame? Very creditable, very handy, you fellows—well done. Right-ho, Izzat, let's have some of those rockets along here, sharp now! Mustn't keep ladies waiting, what?' And I took a slap at her tight little backside—I don't know when I've felt so full of beans.
It was a fine, sweaty confusion in the go-down as they dragged the rockets down to the firing-frame, and I egged 'em on, and showed them how to lay a rocket in the half-pipe—no corrosion there, thank God, I noted, and the Silk One fairly twitched with impatience—strange girl, she was, tense as a telegraph wire at moments like this, but all composure when she was at home—while I lectured her on the importance of unrusted surfaces, so that the rockets flew straight.
'In God's name, angliski!' cries Kutebar. 'Let us be about it! See the Mikhail yonder, with enough munitions aboard to blow the Aral dry—for the love of women, let us fire on her!'
'All right, old fellow,' says I. 'Let's see how we stand.' I squinted along the half-pipe, which was at full elevation. 'Give us a box beneath the pipe, to lift her. So—steady.' I adjusted the ranging-screw, and now the great conical head of the rocket was pointing just over her main mast. 'That's about it. Right, give me a slow-match, someone.'
Suddenly there wasn't a sound in the go-down, apart from me whistling to myself as I took a last squint along the rocket and glanced round to see that everything was ready. I can see them still—the eager, bearded hawk- faces, the glistening half-naked bodies running sweat in the stuffy go-down, even Kutebar with his mouth hanging open, quiet for once, Ko Dali's daughter with her face chalk-white and her eyes fixed on me. I gave her a wink.
'Stand clear, boys and girls,' I sang out. 'Papa's going to light the blue touch-paper and retire immediately!' And in that instant before I touched the match to the firing-vent, I had a sudden vivid memory of November the Fifth, with the frosty ground and the dark, and little boys chattering and giggling and the girls covering their ears, and the red eye of the rocket smouldering in the black, and the white fizz of sparks, and the chorus of admiring 'oohs' and 'aahs' as the rocket bursts overhead—and it was something like that now, if you like, except that here the fizzing was like a locomotive funnel belching sparks, filling the go-down with acrid, reeking smoke, while the firing-frame shuddered, and then with an almighty whoosh like an express tearing by the Congreve went rushing away into the night, clouds of smoke and fire gushing from its tail, and the boys and girls cried 'By Shaitan!' and 'Istagfarullah!', and Papa skipped nimbly aside roaring 'Take that, you sons of bitches!' And we all stood gaping as it soared into the night like a comet, reached the top of its arc, dipped towards the Mikhail—and vanished miles on
