Flashman and the Dragon. George Fraser MacDonald

’Sides, they can see the Taipings are only good at killing and stealing and laying waste.’

      ‘You seem to have learned a lot in a short time,’ I said, and he replied that one trip up to Nanking, and a look at the country around, had been enough for him. ‘They’re so mean and cruel,’ he kept saying. ‘Sure, the Imps are worse – their army’s rotten, and they just use the war as an excuse for plundering and killing wherever they go – but at least they’ve got something behind them, I mean, a real government, even if it doesn’t work too well … a … a … sort of like the Constitution. I mean … China.’ He grinned ruefully, and poured me another drink. ‘I don’t make it too clear, I guess. But the Taipings just have this crazy dream – and they’re no good at making things work. Well, the Imps aren’t much better, maybe, but at least they can read and write.’

      I asked if he had seen anything of the leading Taipings at Nanking, and he said, no, but he had heard plenty. ‘They do all right, from what I hear – that’s what really got my goat. There’s all this fine talk about love and brotherhood and equality – but the Wangs live in palaces and have a high old time, while the people are tret no better’n niggers. You know,’ says he, all boyish earnestness, ‘at the beginning, they made the women and men stay apart – there was a special part of Nanking for the girls, and if they and the boys … you know … why, they just killed ’em. Even now, ’lessn you’re married – well, if you … you know … they just – whist! The poor people are allowed one wife, but the Wangs …’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘They have all the girls they want, and aren’t there some doings in those palaces? So I heard.’ I found this quite cheering, and pressed him for further details, but he didn’t have any. ‘It’s one law for the rich and another for the poor, I guess,’ says he philosophically. ‘Mind, they’ve done some good things, like not letting girls bind their feet, and don’t they come down hard on crooks and shysters, though! Stealing, opium-smoking, girls selling themselves, anything illegal at all – or even just talking out of turn – and off comes the head. I’ve seen that.’

      I wondered how long the people would endure a rule quite as despotic as the Manchoos’, and even less efficient, and he laughed.

      ‘Wait till you see those Taiping soldiers! One thing they’re good at is discipline – putting it on the people, and taking it themselves. That’s why they can whip the Imps, easy; they’re real good, and so are their generals. I’ll tell you something, an’ the sooner all our people realise it, the better – this here’s going to be a Taiping China, for keeps, unless we – I mean you British and us Americans, and the French maybe, do something about it.’ He’d become very earnest, rapping his finger on the locker; a serious lad, when he wasn’t being crazy. But all his talk about the Wangs and their women had reminded me of what I’d been about in the first place, so presently I left him and strolled down to the steerage. Besides, my chat with him had almost been in the way of duty, and I was due for a spell of vicious recreation.

      It was full night now, and we were thumping upstream with the Tsungming lights to starboard and the last warmth dying from the night wind. The great steerage deck, poorly lit, was littered with sleepers, and I was about to turn back, cursing, and wait until daylight, when I heard voices forrard. I picked my way over the bodies and rounded the deckhouse in the bows, and my heart gave a lustful little skip – there was the slim, towering figure at the bow-rail, talking with a couple of Chinese rivermen; they turned to glower at me, and then the girl laughed and said something, and the Chinks melted into the dark, leaving the two of us alone under the bow-lamp. She lounged with her elbows on the rail – Jove, what a height she was, topping me by a good four inches. I stepped up to her, lustfully appraising the play of the superb muscles on the bare bangled arms, the lazy grace of the splendid body, and the sensuous hawk face above the strange chain collar. Aye, she was ready to play; it was in every line of her.

      ‘Hiya, tall girl,’ says I, and she shot me an insolent, knowing look, like a vain tart.

      ‘Gimme smoke, yao,’ says she, extending a palm. ‘Yao’ is ‘foreigner’, and not at all polite from a Chinese to a white man.

      ‘The black smoke, or one of these?’ I offered my cheroot case, and the slant eyes flickered.

      ‘A fan-qui who speaks Chinese? A cheroot, then.’ Certainly not a common woman; she spoke Pekin, albeit roughly. I lit her a cheroot, and she held my hand with the match in slender fingers whose grip made me tingle; not a whore’s touch, though, just simple strength. She inhaled deeply – and so did I, gloating.

      ‘Come to my cabin,’ says I, slightly hoarse, ‘and I’ll give you a drink.’

      She showed her teeth, gripping the cheroot. ‘There’s only one thing you want to give me,’ says she – and named it, anatomically.

      ‘And right you are,’ says I, quite delighted. This was something new in Chinese women – coarse, insolent, and to the point – so to show my own delicacy and good breeding I gripped her port tit; under the thin blouse it felt like a large, hard pineapple. She gave a little grunt, and a long, slow, wicked smile at me, drawing on her cheroot.

      ‘How much cash?’ says she, narrow-eyed.

      ‘My dear child,’ says I, gallantly relinquishing her poont, ‘you don’t have to pay me! Oh, I see … why, I wouldn’t insult you by offering money!’ Wouldn’t I, though – I was boiling fit to offer her the Bank, but I guessed it wouldn’t answer with this one, in spite of her question. She had a damned leery look in her eye, sensual and calculating, but with a glint of amusement, unless I was mistaken.

      ‘No cash, hey? But you expect me to——?’ Her vocabulary was deplorable, but at least it left no room for misunderstanding.

      ‘That’s the ticket,’ says I heartily, ‘so instead of further flirtation I suggest that we—’

      Suddenly she chuckled, and then laughed outright, with her head back and everything quivering to distraction. I was preparing to spring when she came up off the rail, bangles tinkling, and stood looking down at me, the ogre’s missus contemplating a randy Jack-the-Giant-Killer. It’s a rum feeling, I can tell you, being surveyed by a beauty half a head taller than you are. Stimulating, though.

      ‘Suppose,’ says she, in that soft deep voice, ‘that I took payment? I might rob a rich fan-qui.’

      ‘You might try, Miranda. Now then—’

      ‘Yes, I might. And if you, big clever fan-qui, caught me …’ She put her hands on her hips, with that lazy smile. ‘… you might beat a poor girl – would you beat me, fan-qui?’

      ‘With pleasure,’ says I, slavering at the prospect. She nodded, glanced either way, gave me her insolent grin again, drew deep on the cheroot – and pulled the front of her blouse down to her waist.

      For a moment I stood rooted, hornily agog before all that magnificent meat, and then, as any gentleman would have done, I seized one in either hand, nearly crying. Which was absolutely as the designing bitch had calculated – she suddenly gripped my elbows, I instinctively jerked them down to my sides, and without stooping, or shoulder movement, or the least exertion at all, she lifted me clean off the deck! I was too dumbfounded to do anything but dangle while she held me (thirteen-stone-odd, bigod!) with only the strength of her forearms under my rigid elbows, grinned up into my face, and spoke quietly past the cheroot:

      ‘Would you really beat a poor girl, fan-qui?’

      Then before I could reply, or hack her shins, or do anything sensible, she straightened her arms upwards, holding me helpless three feet up in the air, before abruptly letting go. I came down cursing and stumbling, clutching at the deckhouse for support. By the time I’d recovered my balance, she was modestly replacing her blouse, taking a last pull at the cheroot, and flicking it over the rail. She put a hand on her hip, grinning derisively, while I seethed with rage and shame – and awe at the realisation of that appalling strength.

      ‘All right, then, damn you!’ I snarled. ‘Twenty dollars? Fifty if you’ll