The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
wasn’t half bad – the old b----rd became positively mellow, as why shouldn’t he, waited on hand and foot, with two slant-eyed and muscular yellow devils to carry him ashore and bear him in a palki on our excursions? “It’s daein’ me guid,” says he, “I can feel the benefit.” And Elspeth would sigh dreamily while they fanned her in the shade, and Solomon would smile and beckon the steward to put more ice in the glasses – oh, aye, he even had a patent ice-house stowed away somewhere, down by the keel.
Farther south, along the jungly and desert coasts, there was no lack of entertainment – a cruise up a forest river in the ship’s launch, with Elspeth wide-eyed at the sight of crocodiles, which made her shudder deliciously, or laughing at the antics of monkeys and marvelling at the brilliance of foliage and bird-life. “Did I not tell you, Diana, how splendid it would be?” Solomon would say, and Elspeth would exclaim rapturously, “Oh, you did, you did – but this is quite beyond imagination!” Or there would be flying-fish, and porpoises, and once we were round the Cape – where we spent a week, dining out ashore and attending a ball at the Governor’s, which pleased Elspeth no end – there was the real deep blue sea of the Indian Ocean, and more marvels for my insatiable relatives. We began the long haul across to India in perfect weather, and at night Solomon would fetch his guitar and sing dago dirges in the dusk, with Elspeth drowsing on a daybed by the rail, while Morrison cheated me at écarté, or we would play whist, or just laze the time contentedly away. It was tame stuff, if you like, but I put up with it – and kept my eye on Solomon.
For there was no doubt about it, he changed as the voyage progressed. He took the sun pretty strong, and was soon the brownest thing aboard, but in other ways, too, I was reminded that he was at least half-dago or native; instead of the customary shirt sleeves and trousers he took to wearing a tunic and sarong, saying jokingly that it was the proper tropical style; next it was bare feet, and once when the crew were shark-fishing Solomon took a hand at hauling in the huge threshing monster – if you had seen him, stripped to the waist, his great bronze body dripping with sweat, yelling as he heaved on the line and jabbering orders to his men in coast lingo … well, you’d have wondered if it was the same chap who’d been bowling slow lobs at Canterbury, or talking City prices over the port.
Afterwards, when he came to sit on the deck for an iced soda, I noticed Elspeth glancing at his splendid shoulders in a lazy sort of way, and the glitter in his dark eyes as he swept back his moist black hair and smiled at her – he’d been the perfect family friend for months, mind you, never so much as a fondling paw out of place – and I thought, hollo, he’s looking d----d dashing and romantic these days. To make it worse, he’d started growing a chin-beard, a sort of nigger imperial; Elspeth said it gave him quite the corsair touch, so I made a note to roger her twice that night, just to quell these girlish fancies. All this reading Byron ain’t good for young women.
It was the very next day that we came on deck to see a huge green coastline some miles to port; jungle-clad slopes beyond the beach, and mountains behind, and Elspeth cried out to know where it might be. Solomon laughed in an odd way as he came to the rail beside us.
“That’s the strangest country, perhaps, in the whole wide world,” says he. “The strangest – and the most savage and cruel. Few Europeans go there, but I have visited it – it’s very rich, you see,” he went on, turning to old Morrison, “gums and balsam, sugar and silk, indigo and spices – I believe there is coal and iron also. I have hopes of improving on the little trade I have started there. But they are a wild, terrible people; one has to tread warily – and keep an eye on your beached boat.”
“Why, Don Solomon!” cries Elspeth. “We shall not land there, surely?”
“I shall,” says he, “but not you; the Sulu Queen will lie well off – out of any possible danger.”
“What danger?” says I. “Cannibals in war canoes?” He laughed.
“Not quite. Would you believe it if I told you that the capital of that country contains fifty thousand people, half of ’em slaves? That it is ruled by a monstrous black queen, who dresses in the height of eighteenth-century fashion, eats with her fingers from a table laden with gold and silver European cutlery, with place-cards at each chair and wall-paper showing Napoleon’s victories on the wall – and having dined she will go out to watch robbers being burned alive and Christians crucified? That her bodyguard go almost naked – but with pipe-clayed cartridge belts, behind a band playing ‘The British Grenadiers’? That her chief pleasures are torture and slaughter – why, I have seen a ritual execution at which hundreds were buried alive, sawn in half, hurled from—”
“No, Don Solomon, no!” squeals Elspeth, covering her ears, and old Morrison muttered about respecting the presence of ladies – now, the Don Solomon of London would never have mentioned such horrors to a lady, and if he had, he’d have been profuse in his apologies. But here he just smiled and shrugged, and passed on to talk of birds and beasts such as were known nowhere else, great coloured spiders in the jungle, fantastic chameleons, and the curious customs of the native courts, which decided guilt or innocence by giving the accused a special drink and seeing whether he spewed or not; the whole place was ruled by such superstitions and crazy laws, he said, and woe betide the outsider who tried to teach ’em different.
“Odd spot it must be,” says I. “What did you say it was called?”
“Madagascar,” says he, and looked at me. “You have been in some terrible places, Harry – well, if ever you chance to be wrecked there” – and he nodded at the green shore – “pray that you have a bullet left for yourself.” He glanced to see that Elspeth was out of earshot. “The fate of any stranger cast on those shores is too shocking to contemplate; they say the queen has only two uses for foreign men – first, to subdue them to her will, if you follow me, and afterwards, to destroy them by the most fearful tortures she can devise.”
“Playful little lady, is she?”
“You think I’m joking? My dear chap, she kills between twenty and thirty thousand human beings each year – she means to exterminate all tribes except her own, you see. When she came to the throne, some years ago, she had twenty-five thousand enemies rounded up, forced to kneel all together in one great enclosure, and at a given signal, swish! They were all executed at once. She kept a few thousand over, of course, to hang up sewed in ox skins until they rotted – or to be boiled or roasted to death, by way of a change. That’s Madagascar.”
“Ah, well,” says I, “Brighton for me next year, I think. And you’re going ashore?”
“For a few hours. The governor of Tamitave, up the coast, is a fairly civilized savage – all the ruling class are, including the queen: Bond Street dresses, as I said, and a piano in the palace. That’s a remarkable place, by the way – big as a cathedral, and covered entirely by tiny silver bells. G-d knows what goes on in there.”
“You’ve visited it?”
“I’ve seen it – but not been to tea, as you might say. But I’ve talked to those who have been inside it, and who’ve even seen Queen Ranavalona and lived to tell the tale. Europeans, some of ’em.”
“What are they doing there, for G-d’s sake?”
“The Europeans? Oh, they’re slaves.”
At the time, of course, I suspected he was drawing the long bow to impress the visitors – but he wasn’t. No, every word he’d said about Madagascar was gospel true – and not one-tenth of the truth. I know; I found out for myself.
But from the sea it looked placid enough. Tamitave was apparently a very large village of yellow wooden buildings set out in orderly rows back from the shore; there was a fairish-sized fort with a great stockade some distance from the town, and a few soldiers drilling outside it. While Haslam was ashore, I examined them through the glass – big buck niggers in white kilts, with lances and swords, very smart, and moving in time, which is unusual among black troops. They weren’t true niggers, though, it seemed to me; when Haslam was rowed out to the ship again there was an escorting boat, with a chap in the stern in what was a fair imitation of our naval rig: blue