'Tame work for you?' says he. 'Don't you fret, old fellow, you'll get a swipe at them presently, when we come to Patusan! There'll be some capital fun there, you'll see!' And just to give me the idea, he took me below and offered me the choice of some Jersey revolvers with barrels as long as my leg.27 'And a cutlass, of course,' says he, 'you'll feel naked without that.'
He little knew that I could feel naked in a suit of armour in the bowels of a dreadnought being attacked by an angry bumboat-woman. But one has to show willing, so I accepted his weapons with a dark scowl, and tried a cut or two with the cutlass for display, muttering professionally and praying to God I'd never have the chance to use it. He nodded approvingly, and then laid a hand on my shoulder.
'That's the spirit!' says he, 'but, I say, Flashman - I know you feel you've got a lot to repay, and the thought of that dear, sweet creature of yours - well, I can see from your face the rage that is in you - and I don't blame you, mind. But, d'you know what? - whenever I go to battle, I try to remember that Our Saviour, when He had laid out those money-changing chaps in the temple, felt remorse, didn't He, for having got in such a bait? So I try to restrain my anger, and temper justice with mercy - not a bad mixture, what? God bless you, old chap.' And off he went, no doubt for another gloat over the burning praus.
He baffled me, but then so many good Christians do, probably because I'm such a d----d bad one myself. And not having much of a conscience, I'm in no position to judge those that are apparently made of indiarubber - not that I gave a rap how many pirates he'd roasted before giving me his cautionary pi jaw. As it turned out, not many - when Keppel caught us up he reported that the fort had fallen without a shot, Sharif Jaffir having legged it for the jungle with most of the Lanun pirates in tow; those remaining had thrown in their hand when they saw their vessels destroyed and the size of our fleet. So that was all good business, and what pleased Brooke most was that Keppel had brought along three hundred women whom the Lanuns had been carrying off as slaves; he visited them on Keppel's prau, patting their heads and promising them they'd soon be safe home again; I'd have consoled some of 'em more warmly than that, myself- good taste, those Lanun pirates had - but of course there was none of that, under our peckerless leader.
Thereafter he had a quick look at the pirates and slavers who'd been taken prisoner, and ordered the execution of two of them on the spot. One of them was the renegade Makota, I think; at any rate he and Brooke conversed earnestly for about five minutes, while the squat little villain grinned and shuffled his bare feet, looking bashful - according to Stuart, he was confessing to indescribable tortures which he and his pal had inflicted on some of the women prisoners the previous evening - Keppel's party had found the grisly evidence in the village. Finally, when Brooke told him his course was run, the horrid fellow nodded cheerfully, touched hands, and cries 'Salaam, tuan besar', the hovering Jingo slipped a mosquito net and a rope over his head, and pfft! - one quick jerk and that was Makota off to the happy head-hunting grounds.28
The other condemned chap kicked up a frightful row at this, exclaiming 'Krees, krees!' and eyeing the rope and mosquito net as though they were port being passed to the right. What his objection to strangulation was, I'm not certain, but they humoured him, taking him ashore so as not to make a mess. I watched from the rail; he stood up straight, his toad-like face impassive, while Jingo laid his krees point delicately inside the clavicle on the left side, and thrust down hard. The fellow never even twitched.
'A sorry business,' says Brooke, 'but before such atrocities I find it hard to remain composed.'
After that it was all aboard the Skylark again, bound for Patusan, which lay about twenty miles farther upstream. 'They'll stand and fight there, where the river narrows,' says Keppel. 'Two hundred praus, I dare say, and their jungle-men peppering us with blow-pipes from the trees.'
'That don't matter,' says Brooke. 'It'll be a case of bursting the booms, and then run up and board, hand- to-hand. It's the forts that count - five of 'em, and you may be sure there'll be a thousand men in each-we must smoke 'em out with rockets and cannon and then charge home, in the old style. That'll be your innings, Charles, as usual,' says he to Wade, and to my horror he added: 'We'll take Flashman with us - make use of your special talents, what?' And he grinned at me as though it were my birthday.
'Couldn't be better!' cries Wade, slapping me on the back. 'Sure an' we'll show you some pretty mixed scrappin', old son. Better than Afghanistan, and you may lay to that. I'll wager ye didn't see many praus rammed in the Khyber Pass, or have obligin' Paythans droppin' tree-trunks on you! What the devil, though - as long as ye can run, swim, scale a bamboo wall, an' keep your sword-arm swingin', yell soon get the hang of it. Like Trafalgar an' Waterloo rolled into one, with a row in a Silver Street pub thrown in!'
They all crowed at this delightful prospect, and Stuart says:
'Remember Seribas last year, when they dropped the booms behind us? My stars, that was a go! Our Ibans had to shoot 'em out of the trees with sumpitans!'
'An' Buster Anderson got shot in the leg when he boarded that bankong - the one that was sinkin',' cries Wade, 'an' Buster had to swim for it, wi' the pirates one side of him an' crocodiles on t'other - an' he comes rollin' ashore, plastered wi' mud an' gore, yellin': `Anyone seen me baccy pouch? - it's got me initials on it!' '
They roared again, and said Buster was a rare card, and Wade recalled how he'd gone ploughing through the battle, performing prodigies in search of his pouch. 'The best of it was,' says he, spluttering, 'Buster didn't smoke!'
This tickled them immensely of course, and Keppel asked where old Buster was these days.
'Alas, we lost him at Murdu,' says Brooke. 'Same cutting-out party I got this'— he tapped his scar —'and a slug in the bicep. Balagnini jumped on him as he was scrambling up their stern-cable - Buster's pistol misfired - he was the most confounded careless chap imaginable with firearms, you know - and the Balagnini took the dear old chap's head almost clean off with his parang. Bad business.'
They shook their heads and agreed it was a damned shame, but cheered up presently when someone recalled that Jack Penty had settled the Balagnini with a lovely backhand cut soon after, and from this they passed to recalling similar happy memories of old pals and enemies, most of 'em deceased in the most grisly circumstances, apparently. Just the kind of thing I like to hear before breakfast - but, d'you know, I learned from Brooke afterwards, that they'd absolutely been trying to raise my spirits.
'Forgive their levity,' says he, 'it is kindly meant. Charlie Wade sees you are quite down in the dumps, fretting about your lady, and he tries to divert you with his chatter about battles past and brave actions ahead - well, when the warhorse hears the trumpets, he don't think about much else, does he? If you just give your mind to what's to do - and I know you're itching to be at it - you'll feel ever so much better.' He muttered something else about my heart being tender enough to suffer, but tough enough not to break, and tooled off to see that we were still headed in the right direction.
By this time I was ready to bolt, but that's the trouble with being afloat - you can only run in circles. There was land not far off, of course, if one could have reached it through water that was no doubt well-stocked with crocodiles, and was prepared to wander in unexplored jungle full of head-hunters. And the prospect got worse through that steaming, fevered day; the river twisted and got narrower, until there was a bare few hundred yards of sluggish water either side of the vessels, with a solid jungle wall hemming us in. Whenever a bird screamed in the undergrowth I almost had a seizure, and we were tormented by mosquito clouds which added their unceasing buzzing to the monotonous throb of Phlegethon's engines and the rhythmic swish of the praus' sweeps.
Worst of all was the stench - the farther we went on, the closer the jungle loomed in on us, the more unbearable became that rotten, musky, choking atmosphere, stifling in its steaming intensity. It conjured up nightmares of corpses decaying in loathsome swamps - I found the sweat which bathed me turning to ice as I watched that hostile green forest wall, conjuring up hideous faces in its shadows, imagining painted horrors lurking in its depths, waiting.
If day was bad, night was ten times worse. Dark found us still a few miles from Patusan, and the mist came with the dusk; as we swung at anchor in midstream there was nothing to be seen but pale white wraiths coming and going in the festering gloom. With all engines stopped you could hear the water gurgling oozily by, even above the devil's chorus of screams and yells from the darkness - I was new to jungle, and had no conception of the appalling din with which it is filled at night. I stayed on deck about ten minutes, in which time I saw at least half a dozen skull-laden praus crammed with savages starting to emerge from the shadows, at which point they dissolved into shadows themselves - after that I decided I might as well turn in, which I did by plumbing the depths of that sweltering iron tub, finding a hole in the corner of the engine-room, and crouching there with my Colt in my fist, listening to the evil whispers of head-hunters congregating on the other side of the half-inch plate.
And barely ten days before I'd been unbuttoning in that Singapore chop-house, bursting with best meat and drink, and running a lascivious eye over Madame Sabba! Now, thanks to Elspeth's wantoning, I was on the eve of
