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

a struggling crawl. The Phlegethon had to be left behind because of the current and snags, to which the pirates had added traps of tree-trunks and sunken rattan nets to trammel our sweeps; every few minutes there would have to be a halt while we cut our way loose, hacking at the creeper ropes, and then hauling on, drenched with sweat and oily water, panting for breath, eyes forever turning to that steaming olive wall that hemmed us in either side, waiting for the whistle of a sumpitan dart that every now and then would come winging out of the jungle to strike a paddler or quiver in the gunwales. Beith, Keppel’s surgeon, was up and down the fleet constantly, digging the beastly things out of limbs and cauterizing wounds; fortunately they were seldom fatal, but I reckoned we were suffering a casualty every half-hour.

      It wouldn’t have been too bad if I’d still had the Phlegethon’s iron sheets to skulk behind, but I had been assigned to Paitingi’s spy-boat, which was as often as not in the lead; only at night did I go back aboard the Jolly Bachelor with Brooke, and that wasn’t much comfort – huddled up for sleep at the foot of her ladder after the tintacks had been scattered on her deck against night attack, sweating in the cramped dark, filthy and unkempt, listening to the screaming noise of the jungle and the occasional distant throb of a war-gong – doom, doom, doom, out of the misty dark.

      “Drum away, Muller,” Brooke would say, “we’ll be playing you a livelier tune presently, just you wait. We’ll see some fun then – eh, Flashy?”

      By his lights, I suppose that what happened on the third day along the Undup was fun – a dawn attack on Muller’s fort, which was a great stockaded bamboo castle on a steep hill. The rocket-praus pounded it, and the remnants of the pirate fleet in their anchorage, and then Dido’s men and the Dyaks swarmed ashore, the latter war-dancing on the landing-ground before the assault, leaping, shaking their sumpitans and yelling “Dyak!” (“that’s aye their way,” says Paitingi to me as we watched from the spy-boat, “they’d sooner yelp than fight” – which I thought pretty hard). Poor Charlie Wade was killed storming the fort; I heard later he’d been shot while carrying a Malay child to shelter, which shows what Christian charity gets you.

      The only part I took in the fight, though, was when a prau broke free from the pirate anchorage and made off upriver, sweeps going like blazes and war-gong thundering. Paitingi danced up and down, roaring in Scotch and Arabic that he could see Muller’s personal banner on her, so our spy set off in pursuit. The prau foundered, burning from rocket-fire, but Muller, a persevering big villain in quilted armour and black turban, took to a sampan; we overhauled it, banging away, and I was having the horrors at the thought of boarding when the sensible chap dived overboard with his gang at his heels and swam for it. We lost him near the jungle-edge, and Paitingi tore his beard, cussing as only an Arab can.

      “Come back and fight, ye son-of-a-Malay-b---h!” cries he, shaking his fist. “Istagfurallah! Is it thus that pirates prove their courage? Aye, run to the jungle, ye Port Said pimp, you! By the Seven Heroes, I shall give thy head to my Lingas yet, thou uncircumcised carrion! Ach! Burn his grandmither – he’s awa’ wi’ it, so he is!”

By this time the fort was taken,³⁰ and we left it burning, and the dead unburied, for it had been discovered from a prisoner that our principal quarry, Suleiman Usman, with the Sulu Queen – and presumably my errant wife – had taken refuge up the Skrang river with a force of praus. So it was back down the Undup again, a good deal faster than we had come up, to the mainstream, where Phlegethon was guarding the junction.

      “You can’t run much farther now, Usman, my son,” says Brooke. “Skrang’s navigable for a few miles at most; if he takes Sulu Queen any distance up he’ll ground her. He’s bound to stand and fight – why, he’s still got more men and keels than we have, and while we’ve been chasing Muller he’s had time to put ’em in order. He must know we’re pretty used up and thinned out, too.”

      That was no lie, either. The faces round the table in Phlegethon’s tiny ward-room were puffy and hollow-eyed with fatigue; Keppel, the spruce naval officer of a week ago, looked like a scarecrow with his unshaven cheeks and matted hair, his uniform coat cut and torn and the epaulette burned away; Charlie Johnson, with his arm in a bloodstained sling, was dozing and waking like a clockwork doll; even Stuart, normally the liveliest of fellows, was sitting tuckered out, with his head in his hands, his half-cleaned revolver on the table before him. (I can see it now, with the little brass ram-rod sticking out of the barrel, and a big black moth perched on the foresight, rubbing its feelers.) Only Brooke was still as offensively chipper as ever, clean-shaven and alert, for all that his eyes looked like streaky bacon; he glanced round at us, and I could guess that he was thinking: this pack can’t follow much longer.

      “However,” says he, grinning slyly, “we ain’t as used up as all that, are we? I reckon there’s three days’ energy left in every man here – and four in me. I tell you what …” he squared his elbows on the table “… I’m going to give a dinner-party tomorrow night – full dress for everyone, of course – on the eve of what is going to be our last fight against these rascals—”

      “Bismillah! I’d like tae believe that,” says Paitingi.

      “Well, our last on this expedition, anyway,” cries Brooke. “It’s bound to be – either we wipe them up or they finish us – but that ain’t going to happen, not after the drubbings we’ve given ’em already. I’ve got a dozen of champagne down below, and we’ll crack ’em to our crowning success, eh?”

      “Wouldn’t it be better to keep ’em for afterwards?” says Keppel, but at this Stuart raised his head and shook it, smiling wearily.

      “Might not all be here by then. This way, everyone’s sure of a share beforehand – that’s what you said the night before we went in against the Lingas in the old Royalist, ain’t it, J.B.? Remember – the nineteen of us, five years ago? ‘There’s no drinking after death.’ By Jove, though – there ain’t many of the nineteen left …”

      “Plenty of new chums, though,” says Brooke quickly, “and they’re going to sing for their supper, just the way we did then, and have done ever since.” He shoved Charlie Johnson’s nodding head to and fro. “Wake up, Charlie! It’s singing night, if you want your dinner tomorrow! Come on, or I’ll shove a wet sponge down your back! Sing, laddie, sing! George has given you the lead!”

      Johnson blinked and stammered, but Brooke gave tongue with “Here’s a health to the King, and a lasting peace”, thumping the table, and Charlie came in, croaking, on the lines

       “So let us drink while we have breath

       For there’s no drinking after death”

      and carried on solo to the end, goggling like an owl, while Brooke beat the table and cried, good boy, Charlie, sick ’em, pup. The others looked embarrassed, but Brooke rounded on Keppel, badgering him to sing; Keppel didn’t want to, at first, and sat looking annoyed and sheepish, but Brooke worked away at him, full of high spirits, and what else was the chap to do? So he sang “Spanish Ladies” – he sang well, I’m bound to say, in a rolling bass – and by this time even the tiredest round the table were grinning and joining in the chorus, with Brooke encouraging and keeping time, and watching us like a hawk. He sang “The Arethusa” himself, and even coaxed Paitingi, who gave us a psalm, at which Charlie giggled hysterically, but Keppel joined in like thunder, and then Brooke glanced at me, nodding quietly, so I found myself giving ’em “Drink, puppy, drink”, and they stamped and thumped to make the cabin shiver.

      It was a shameful performance – so forced and false it was disgusting, this jolly lunatic putting heart into his men by making ’em sing, and everyone hating it. But they sang, you’ll notice, and me along with ’em, and at the finish Brooke jumps up and cries:

      “Come, that’s none so bad! We’ll have a choir yet. Spy-boats will lead tomorrow – 5 a.m. sharp, then Dido’s pinnace, the two cutters, gig, Jolly Bachelor, then the small boats. Dinner at seven, prompt. Good night, gentlemen!”

      And off he went, leaving us gawking