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

brought us up short and pointed, grinning, and looking down that vast slope of people I saw that in a clear space long narrow pits had been dug, and in the pits were scores of human beings, tied to stakes. At the end of each pit huge cauldrons were fixed, above roaring fires, and even as we watched a gong boomed out, the enormous chattering crowd fell silent, and a gang of black fiends tilted the first of the cauldrons, slowly, slowly, while the poor devils in the pits shrieked and writhed; boiling water slopped over the cauldron’s lip, first in a small stream, then in a scalding cascade, surging down into the pit with a horrible sizzling cloud of steam that blotted out the view. When it cleared I saw to my horror that it only filled the pit waist deep – the victims were boiling alive by inches, while the onlookers bayed and cheered in a tumult of sound that echoed across that ghastly amphitheatre of death. There were six pits; they filled them one by one.

      That was the main performance, you understand. After that, figures appeared at the top of the cliff, which was three hundred feet up, and the luckier condemned were thrown off, the crowd giving a great rising whistle as each struggling body took flight, and a mighty howl when it struck the ground below – there was particular applause if one landed in the water-pits, which were still steaming mistily with the contorted figures hanging from their stakes. They didn’t just throw the condemned people down the cliff, by the way – they suspended ’em first by ropes, to let the mob have a good look, and then cut them free to drop.

      I make no comment myself – because as I watched this beastly spectacle I seemed to hear the voice of my little Newgate friend in my ear – “Interesting, isn’t it?” – and see again the yelling, gloating audience outside the Magpie and Stump; they were much the same, I suppose, as their heathen brethren. And if you tell me indignantly that hanging is a very different thing from boiling alive – or burning, flaying, flogging, sawing, impaling, and live burial, all of which I’ve seen at Ambohipotsy – I shall only remark that if these spectacles were offered in England it would be a case of “standing room only” – for the first few shows, anyway.

However, if the relation of such atrocities nauseates you,³⁵ I can only say that I swore to tell the truth of what I saw, and any qualms you may suffer were as nothing to poor old Flashy’s mental distress as we were herded away from the scene of execution – I’ll swear we were only there because our guards didn’t want to miss it – and through one of the massive gates into Antan’ town proper. Its name, by the way, means “City of a Thousand Towns”, and it was as impressive at first hand as it had been from a distance. Wide, clean streets were lined by fine wooden buildings, some of them two and three storeys high (all building must be of wood, by law) and starved and shaken with terror as I was, I could not but marvel at the air of richness there was about the place. Well-stocked booths, shady avenues, neatly-robed folk bustling about their business, expensively-carved and painted sedans swaying through the streets, carrying the better sort, some in half-European clobber, others in splendid sarongs, and lambas of coloured silk. There was no making sense of it – on the one hand, the horrors I had just watched, and on the other this pleasant, airy, civilized-looking city – with Captain Harry Flashman and friends being kicked and flogged through the middle of it, and no one giving us more than a casual glance. Oh, aye – every building had a European lightning conductor.

      They locked us in an airy, reasonably clean warehouse for the night, took off our fetters, and gave us our first decent meal for a week – a spicy mutton stew, bread and cheese, and more of their infernal rice-piddle. We scoffed it like wolves – a dozen woolly niggers snuffling over their bowls and one English gentleman dining with refinement, I don’t think. But if it did something for my aching, filthy body, it did nothing for my spirits – this nightmare of existence seemed to have endured forever, and it was mad, incredible, out of all reason. But I must hang on – I had played cricket once, and bowled Felix; I had been to Rugby, and Horse Guards, and Buckingham Palace; I had an address in Mayfair; I had dined at White’s – as a guest, granted – and strolled on Pall Mall. I wasn’t just a lost soul in a lunatic black world, I was Harry Flashman, ex-11th Hussars, four medals and Thanks of Parliament, however undeserved. I must hang on – and surely, in the city I’d seen, there must be some civilized person in authority who spoke French or English, to whom I could state my case and receive the treatment that was my due as a British officer and citizen. After all, they weren’t real savages, not with streets and buildings like these – a touch colourful in the way they disposed of malefactors, no doubt, and no poor relief worth a d--n, but no society’s perfect. I must talk to someone.

      The difficulty was – who? When they turned us out next morning, we were taken in charge by a couple of black overseers, who spoke nothing but jabber; they thrust us along a narrow alley, and out into a crowded square in which there was a long platform, railed off to one side, with guards stationed at its corners, to keep the mob back. It looked like a public meeting; there were a couple of black officials on the platform, and two more seated at a small table before it. We were pushed up a flight of steps to the platform, and made to stand in line; I was still blinking from the sunlight, wondering what this might portend, as I looked out over the crowd – blacks in lambas and robes for the most part, a few knots of officers in comic-opera uniforms, plenty of sedans with wealthy Malagassies sitting under striped umbrellas. I scanned the faces of the officers eagerly; those would be the French-speakers, and I was just about to raise a halloo to attract their attention when a face near the front of the crowd caught my eye like a magnet, and my heart leaped with excitement.

      He was a tall man, wide-shouldered but lean, wearing a bright embroidered shirt under a blue broadcloth coat, and with a silk scarf tied like a cravat; he and his neighbour, a portly sambo resplendent in sarong and cocked hat, were taking snuff in the local fashion, the lean chap accepting a pinch from the other’s box on the palm of his hand and engulfing it with a quick flick of his tongue (it tastes beastly, I can tell you). He grimaced and raised his eyes; they met mine, and stared – they were bright blue eyes, in a face burned brown under a mane of greying hair. But there was no doubt of it – he was a white man.

      “You!” I roared. “You, sir! Monsieur! Parlez-vous français? anglais? Hindi? Latin? B----y Greek, even? Listen to me – I must talk to you!”

      One of the guards was striding forward to thrust me back, but the lean man was pushing his way through the mob, to my unutterable relief, and at a word from him to the officials he was allowed to approach the platform. He looked up at me, frowning, as I knelt down to be close to him.

      “Français?” says he.

      “I’m English – a prisoner, from a boat that came in at Tamitave! In G-d’s name, how can I get out of this? No one listens to me – they’ve been dragging me all over the bl----d country for weeks! I must—”

      “Gently, gently,” says he, and at the sound of the English words I could have wept. Then: “Smile, monsieur. Smile-what is the word – broadly? Laugh, if you can – but converse quietly. It is for your own good. Now, who are you?”

      I didn’t understand, but I forced a ghastly grin, and told him who I was, what had happened, and my total ignorance of why I’d been brought here. He listened intently, those vivid eyes playing over my face, motioning me to speak softly whenever my voice rose – which, as you can imagine, it tended to do. All the time he was plainly avoiding glancing at my guards or the officials, but he was listening for them. When I had finished he fingered his cravat, nodding, as though I’d been telling him the latest for “Punch”, and smiling pleasantly.

      “Eh bien,” says he. “Now attend, and not interrupt. If my English she is not perfect, I use French, but better not. No? Whatever I say, betray no amaze’, do you see? Smile, if you please. Good. I am Jean Laborde, once of the Emperor’s cavalry. I have been here thirteen years, I am a citizen. You do not know Madagascar?”

      I shook my head, and he put back his head and laughed softly, plainly for the onlookers’ benefit.

      “They detest all Europe, and English especially. Since you land without permission, they treat you as naufragé – how you call? – shipwreck? Castaway? By their law – please to smile, monsieur, very much – all such persons must be made slaves. This is a slave-market. They make you