Flashman and the Dragon. George Fraser MacDonald

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      How Did I Get the Idea of Flashman?

      Dedication

      Explanatory Note

       Map

       Chapter 1

       Chapter 2

       Chapter 3

       Chapter 4

       Chapter 5

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Appendix I

       Appendix II

       Appendix III

       Footnotes

       Notes

       Glossary

       About the Author

       The FLASHMAN Papers: In chronological order

       The FLASHMAN Papers: In order of publication

       Also by George MacDonald Fraser

       About the Publisher

       EXPLANATORY NOTE

      It is now twenty years since the Flashman Papers, the memoirs of the notorious Rugby School bully who became a Victorian hero, were found in a Leicestershire saleroom. Of the dozen or so packets of manuscript, seven have so far been published in book form; they have covered four military campaigns (the First Afghan War, Crimea, Indian Mutiny, and Sioux War of 1879), and five episodes of less formal and generally reluctant active service – pirate-hunting with Brooke of Sarawak; as military adviser to Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar; as conspirator with Bismarck in the Schleswig-Holstein affair; in the African slave trade and Underground Railroad; and on the American frontier during the Gold Rush. This eighth volume sees him returning to military service in the Taiping Rebellion and Pekin Expedition of 1860.

      Not the least interesting feature of Flashman’s recollections, to students of history, is the light they cast on the early years of many famous Victorians, who are seen through the unsparing eyes of one who, while a self-confessed coward, libertine, and scoundrel, was nevertheless a scrupulous reporter. Thus, we have seen him fleeing the murderous wrath of the young politician Bismarck, viewing Congressman Lincoln with wary respect, teaching the infant Crazy Horse how to wink, admiring Lola Montez the aspiring novelty dancer, and toadying to the young Queen Victoria herself. In China he encounters two of the great mercenary captains, a future empress, the founding fathers of the modern British Army and Navy, and those strange, forgotten peasants who changed the face of a great empire. It may be that he provides some new historical insights, while again demonstrating the lengths to which perfidy, impudence, immorality, and poltroonery may be stretched in the enforced pursuit of fame, riches, and above all, survival.

      In accordance with the wishes of Mr Paget Morrison, owner of the Flashman manuscripts, I have confined my editing to correcting the old soldier’s spelling, checking the accuracy of the narrative (which is exact where matters of verifiable historical fact are concerned) and inserting the usual foot-notes, appendices, and glossary.

      G.M.F.

      Old Professor Flashy’s first law of economics is that the time to beware of a pretty woman is not when you’re flush of cash (well, you know what she’s after, and what’s a bankroll more or less?), but when you’re short of the scratch, and she offers to set you right. Because that ain’t natural, and God knows what she’s up to. I learned this when I was fourteen, and one Lady Geraldine, a high-spirited Hebe ten years my senior, lured me out in a punt with the promise of a crown if I minded her clothes while she went bathing. In all innocence, I accepted – and I haven’t seen that five bob yet, because the randy baggage had to shell out all her loose change to buy the silence of the grinning water-bailiff who caught us unawares in the reeds, where she was teaching me natural history after her swim. I had the presence of mind even at that tender age to clap my breeches over my face and so avoid recognition as I fled, but you take the point – I had been misled, in my youthful simplicity, by a designing female who played on my natural cupidity.

      Ever since, when they’ve dangled rich rewards before me, I’ve taken fright. If the case of Mrs Phoebe Carpenter was an exception – well, she was a clergyman’s wife, and you don’t expect double-dealing from a wide-eyed simperer who sings come-to-Jesus in the choir. I don’t know why I bothered with her … yes, I do, though; shaped like an Indian nautch-dancer under her muslin, blue-eyed, golden-haired, and with that pouting lower lip that’s as good as a beckoning finger to chaps like me – she reminded me rather of my darling wife, whom I hadn’t seen in more than three years and was getting uncommon hungry for. So, reading the invitation in Mrs Carpenter’s demure smile, and having ten days to loaf in Hong Kong before my ship sailed for Home,¹ I decided to have a cast at her; it was a dead-and-alive hole in ’60, I can tell you, and how else should a weary soldier pass his time?

      So I attended morning and evening service, hollering hosannas and nodding stern approval while her drone of a husband sermonised about temptation and the snares that Satan spreads (about which he didn’t know the first dam’ thing), and gallantly helping her to gather up the hymn-books afterwards. I dined with them, traded a text or two with the Reverend, joined them in evening prayers, squired her along the Queen’s Road – she was all for it, of course, but what was middling rum was that he was, too; it ain’t every middle-aged vicar who cares to see his young bride escorted by a dashing Lancer with Balaclava whiskers. I put it down to natural toad-eating on his part, for I was the lion of the hour in those days, with my new knighthood and V.C., and all my Mutiny heroics to add to the fame I had undeservedly won in Crimea and Afghanistan. If you’ve read my earlier memoirs you’ll know all about it – and how by shirking, running, diving into cover, and shielding my quaking carcase behind better men, I had emerged after four campaigns with tremendous credit, a tidy sum in loot, and a chestful of tinware. I was a colonel of six years’ seniority at 37, big, bluff,