and I was lying staring up at the thin rays of sunlight that were breaking through the screens - for it was now full day outside - there broke at last the sudden dreadful realization of what had happened. Elspeth was gone; she was in the clutches of a nigger pirate, who could take her beyond the maps of Europeans, to some horrible stronghold where she'd be his slave, where we could never hope to find her - my beautiful, idiot Elspeth, with her creamy skin and golden hair and imbecile smile and wonderful body, lost to me, forever.
I ain't sentimental, but suddenly I could feel the tears running down my face, and I was muttering her name in the darkness, over and over, alone in my empty bed, where she ought to have been, all soft and warm and passionate - and just then there was a scratching at my door, and when it opened, there was Whampoa, bowing from his great height on the threshold. He came forward beside the bed, his hands tucked into his sleeves, and looked down at me. Was my shoulder, he asked, giving me great pain? I said it was agony.
'But no greater,' says he, 'than your torment of mind. That, too, nothing can alleviate. The loss you have suffered of the loveliest of companions, is a deprivation which cannot but excite compassion in any man of feeling. I know that nothing can take the place of the beautiful golden lady, and that every thought of her must be a pang of the most exquisite agony. But as some small, poor consolation to your grief of mind and body, I humbly offer the best that my poor establishment provides.' He said something in Chinese, and through the door, to my amazement, glided two of his little Chink girls, one in red silk, t'other in green. They came forward and stood either side of the bed, like voluptuous little dolls, and began to unbutton their dresses.
'These are White Tigress and Honey-and-Milk,' says Whampoa. 'To offer you the services of only one would have seemed an insulting comparison with the magic of your exquisite lady, therefore I send two, in the hope that quantity may be some trivial amend for a quality which they cannot hope to approach. Triflingly inadequate as they are, their presence may soothe your pains in some infinitesimal degree. They are skilful by our mean standards, but if their clumsiness and undoubted ugliness are offensive, you should beat them for their correction and your pleasure. Forgive my presumption in presenting them.'
He bowed, retreating, and the door closed behind him just as the two dresses dropped to the floor with a gentle swish, and two girlish giggles sounded in the dimness.
You must never refuse an Oriental's hospitality, you know. It doesn't do, or they get offended; you just have to buckle to and pretend it's exactly what you wanted, whether you like it or not.
* * *
For four days I was confined in Whampoa's house with my gashed shoulder, recuperating, and I've never had a more blissfully ruinous convalescence in my life. It would have been interesting, had there been time, to see whether my wound healed before Whampoa's solicitous young ladies killed me with their attentions; my own belief is that I would have expired just about the time the stitches were ready to come out. As it was, my confinement was cut short by the arrival and swift departure of HMS Dido, commanded by one Keppel, RN; willy-nilly, I had to sail with her, staggering aboard still weak with loss of blood, et cetera, clutching the gangway not so much for support as to prevent my being wafted away by the first puff of breeze.
You see, it was taken for granted that as a devoted husband and military hero, I was in a sweat to be off in quest of my abducted spouse and her pirate ravisher - that was one of the disadvantages of life on the frontiers of Empire in the earlies, that you were expected to do your own avenging and recovering, with such assistance as the authorities might lend. Not my style at all; left to old Flash it would have been a case of tooling round to the local constabulary, reporting a kidnapped wife, leaving my name and address, and letting 'em get on with it. After all, it's what they're paid for, and why else was I stumping up sevenpence in the pound income tax?
I said as much to old Morrison, thinking it was the kind of view that would appeal to him, but all I got for my pains was tears and curses.
'You're tae blame!' whimpers he, for he was far too reduced to bawl; he looked fit to pass away, his eyes sunk and his cheeks blenched, but still full of spite against me. 'If you had been daein' your duty as a husband, this would never have happened. Oh, Goad, ma puir wee lamb! My wee bit lassie - and you, where were ye? Whoorin' away in some hoose o' ill fame, like enough, while—'
'Nothing of the sort!' cries I indignantly. 'I was at a Chinese restaurant,' at which he set up a great wail, burying his head in the bed-clothes and bawling about his wee bairn.
'Ye'll bring her back!' he croaks presently. 'Ye'll save her - you're a military man, wi' decorations, an' she's the wife o' your boozum, so she is! Say ye'll bring her back tae her puir auld faither? Aye, yell dae that - ye're a guid lad, Harry - ye'll no' fail her.' And more in the same nauseating vein, interspersed with curses that he had ever set foot outside Glasgow. No doubt it was very pitiable, and if I'd been less disturbed myself and hadn't despised the little swine so heartily, I might have felt sorry for him. I doubt it, though.
I left him lamenting, and went off to nurse my shoulder and reflect gloomily that there was no help for it - I would have to be first in the field when the pursuit got under way. The fellow Brooke, who - for reasons that I couldn't fathom just then - seemed to have taken on himself the planning of the expedition, obviously took it for granted that I would go, and when Keppel arrived and agreed at once to put Dido and her crew into the business, there was no hanging back any longer.
Brooke was in a great lather of impatience to be away, and stamped and ground his teeth when Keppel said it would be at least three days before he could sail; he had treasure from Calcutta to unload, and must lay in stores and equipment for the expedition. 'It'll be river fighting, I dare say,' says he, yawning; he was a dry, likely-looking chap with blazing red hair and sleepy, humorous eyes.18 'Cutting out, jungle work, ambushes, that sort of thing? Ye-es, well, we know what happens if you rush into it at half-cock - remember how Belcher ripped the bottom out of Samarang on a shoal last year? I'll have to restow Dido's ballast, for one thing, and take on a couple of extra launches.'
'I can't wait for that!' cries Brooke. 'I must get to Kuching, for news of this villain Suleiman and to get my people and boats together. I hear Harlequin's been sighted; I'll go ahead in her - Hastings will take me when I tell him how fearfully urgent it is. We must run down this scoundrel and free Mrs Flashman without a moment's delay!'
'You're sure it'll be Borneo, then?' says Keppel.
'It has to be!' cried Brooke. 'No ship from the south in the last two days has sighted him. Depend upon it, he'll either run for Maludu or the rivers.'
It was all Greek to me, and sounded horribly active and risky, but everyone deferred to Brooke's judgement, and next day off he sailed in Harlequin. Because of my wound I was to rest in Singapore until Dido sailed two days later, but perforce I must be down at the quay when Brooke was rowed out with his motley gang by Harlequin's boat crew. He seized my hand at parting.
'By the time you reach Kuching, we'll be ready to run up the flag and run out the guns!' cried he. 'You'll see! And don't fret yourself, old fellow - we shall have your dear lady back safe and sound before you know it. Just you limber up that sword-arm, and between us we'll give these dogs a bit of your Afghan sauce. Why, in Sarawak we do this sort of thing before breakfast! Don't we, Paitingi? Eh, Mackenzie?'
I watched them go - Brooke in the stern with his pilot-cap tipped at a rakish angle, laughing and slapping his knee in eagerness; the enormous Paitingi at his elbow, the black-bearded Mackenzie with his medical bag, and the other hard-cases disposed about the boat, with the hideous little Jingo in his loin-cloth nursing his blow-pipe spear. That was the fancy-dress crowd that I was to accompany on what sounded like a most hair-raising piece of madness - it was a dreadful prospect, and on the heels of my apprehension came fierce resentment at the frightful luck that was about to pitch me headlong into the stew again. Damn Elspeth, for a hare-brained, careless, wanton, ogling little slut, and damn Solomon for a horny thief who hadn't the decency to be content with women of his own beastly colour, and damn this officious, bloodthirsty lunatic Brooke - who the devil was he to go busybodying about uninvited, dragging me into his idiot enterprises? What right had he, and why did everyone defer to him as though he was some mixture of God and the Duke of Wellington?
I found out, the evening Dido sailed, after I had taken my fond farewells - whining and shouting with Morrison, stately and generous with the hospitable Whampoa, and ecstatically frenzied in the last minute of packing with my dear little nurses. I went aboard almost on my hands and knees, as I've said, with Stuart helping me, for he had stayed behind to bear me company and execute some business for Brooke. It was while we were at the stern rail of the corvette, watching the Singapore islands sinking black into the fiery sunset sea, that I dropped some chance remark about his crazy commander - as you know, I still had precious little idea who he was, and I must have said so, for Stuart started round, staring at me.
'Who's J.B.?' he cried. 'You can't mean it! Who's J.B.? You don't know? Why, he's the greatest man in the
