The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald

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