The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
black face, but the rowers were dark brown and woolly haired, with straight noses and quite fine features.
That was the closest I got to the Malagassies, just then, and you may come to agree that it was near enough. Solomon seemed well satisfied with whatever business he had done ashore, and by next morning we were far out to sea with Madagascar forgotten behind us.
Now, I said I wouldn’t weary you with our voyage, so I shall do no more than mention Ceylon and Madras – which is all they deserve, anyway, and take you straight away across the Bengal Bay, past the infernal Andamans, south by the heel of Great Nicobar, and into the steaming straits where the great jellyfishes swim between the mainland of Malaya and the strange jungle island of Sumatra with its man-monkeys, down to the sea where the sun comes from, and the Islands lie ahead of you in a great brilliant chain that runs thousands of miles from the South China Sea to Australia and the far Pacific on the other side of the world. That’s the East – the Islands; and you may take it from one who has India in his bones, there’s no sea so blue, no lands so green, and no sun so bright, as you’ll find beyond Singapore. What was it Solomon had said – “where it’s always morning.” So it was, and in that part of my imagination where I keep the best memories, it always will be.
That’s one side of it. I wasn’t to know, then, that Singapore was the last jumping-off place from civilization into a world as terrible as it was beautiful, rich and savage and cruel beyond belief, of land and seas still unexplored where even the mighty Royal Navy sent only a few questing warships, and the handful of white adventurers who voyaged in survived by the speed of their keels and slept on their guns. It’s quiet now, and the law, British and Dutch, runs from Sunda Strait to the Solomons; the coasts are tamed, the last trophy heads in the long-houses are ancient and shrivelled,13 and there’s hardly a man alive who can say he’s heard the war gongs booming as the great robber fleets swept down from the Sulu Sea. Well, I heard ’em, only too clearly, and for all the good I’ve got to say of the Islands, I can tell you that if I’d known on that first voyage what I learned later, I’d have jumped ship at Madras.
But I was happily ignorant, and when we slipped in past the green sugar-loaf islands one fine April morning of ’44, and dropped anchor in Singapore roads, it looked safe enough to me. The bay was alive with shipping, a hundred square-riggers if there was one: huge Indiamen under the gridiron flag, tall clippers of the Southern Run wearing the Stars and Stripes, British merchantmen by the bucketful, ships of every nationality – Solomon pointed out the blue crossed anchors of Russia, the red and gold bars of Spain, the blue and yellow of Sweden, even a gold lion which he said was Venice. Closer in, the tubby junks and long trading praus were packed so close it seemed you could have walked on them right across the bay, fairly seething with half-naked crews of Malays, Chinese, and every colour from pale yellow to jet black, deafening us with their high-pitched chatter as Solomon’s rowers threaded the launch through to the river quay. There it was bedlam; all Asia seemed to have congregated on the landing, bringing their pungent smells and deafening sounds with them.
There were coolies everywhere, in straw hats or dirty turbans, staggering half-naked under bales and boxes – they swarmed on the quays, on the sampans that choked the river, round the warehouses and go-downs, and through them pushed Yankee captains in their short jackets and tall hats, removing their cheroots from their rat-trap jaws only to spit and cuss; Armenian Jews in black coats and long beards, all babbling; British blue-jackets in canvas shirts and ducks; long-moustached Chinese merchants in their round caps, borne in palkis; British traders from the Sundas with their pistols on their hips; leathery clipper men in pilot caps, shouting oaths of Liverpool and New York; planters in wideawakes making play among the niggers with their stout canes; a file of prisoners tramping by in leg-irons, with scarlet-coated soldiers herding them and bawling the step – I heard English, Dutch, German, Spanish, and Hindi all in the first minute, and most of the accents of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the American seaboards to boot. God knows what the native tongues were, but they were all being used at full pitch, and after the comparative quiet we’d been used to it was enough to make you dizzy. The stink was fearful, too.
Of course, waterfronts are much the same everywhere; once you were away from the river, out on the “Mayfair” side of the town, which lay east along Beach Road, it was pleasant, and that was where Solomon had his house, a fine two-storey mansion set in an extensive garden, facing the sea. We were installed in cool, airy rooms, all complete with fans and screens, legions of Chinese servants to look after us, cold drinks by the gallon, and nothing to do but rest in luxury and recover from the rigours of our voyage, which we did for the next three weeks.
Old Morrison was all for it; he had gluttonized to such a tune that he’d put on flesh alarmingly, and all he wanted to do was lie down, belching and refreshing his ill nature in a hot climate. Elspeth, on the other hand, must be up and doing at once; she was off almost before she’d changed her shift, carried in a palki by menials, to pay calls on what she called The Society People, find out who was who, and squander money in the shops and bazaars. Solomon pointed her in the right directions, made introductions, and then explained apologetically that he had weeks of work to do in his ’changing-house at the quays; after that, he assured us, we would set off on our tour of his possessions, which I gathered lay somewhere on the east coast of the peninsula.
So there was I, at a loose end – and not before time. I didn’t know when I had been so d---ably bored; a cruise of wonders was all very well, but I’d had my bellyful of Solomon and his floating mansion with its immaculate appointments and unvarying luxury and everything so exactly, confoundedly right, and the finest foods and wines coming out of my ears – I was surfeited with perfection, and sick of the sight of old Morrison’s ugly mug, and the sound of Elspeth’s unwearying imbecile chatter, and having not a d----d thing to do but stuff myself and sleep. I’d not had a scrap of vicious amusement for six months – and, for me, that’s a lifetime of going hungry. Well, thinks I, if Singapore, the fleshpot of the Orient, can’t supply my urgent needs, and give me enough assorted depravity in three weeks to last the long voyage home, there’s something amiss; just let me shave and change my shirt, and we’ll stand this town on its head.
I took a long slant, to get my bearings, and then plunged in, slavering. There were eight cross-streets in the Mayfair section, where all the fine houses were, and a large upland park below Governor’s Hill where Society congregated in the evening – and, by Jove, wasn’t it wild work, though? Why, you might raise your hat to as many as a hundred couples in two hours, and when you were fagged out with this, there was the frantic debauch of a gig drive along Beach Road, to look at the ships, or a dance at the assembly rooms, where a married woman might even polka with you, provided your wife and her husband were on hand – unmarried ladies didn’t waltz, except with each other, the daring little hussies.
Then there were dinners at Dutranquoy’s Hotel, with discussions afterwards about whether the Raffles Club oughtn’t to be revived, and how the building of the new Chinese Pauper Hospital was progressing, and the price of sugar, and the latest leaderette in the “Free Press”, and for the wilder spirits, a game of pyramids on the hotel billiard table – I played twice, and felt soiled at my beastly indulgence. Elspeth was indefatigable, of course, in her pursuit of pleasure, and dragged me to every soirée, ball, and junket that she could find, including church twice each Sunday, and the subscription meetings for the new theatre, and several times we even met Colonel Butter worth, the Governor – well, thinks I, this is Singapore, to be sure, but I’m shot if I can stand this pace for long.14
Once, I asked a likely-looking chap – you could tell he was a rake; he was using pomade – where the less respectable entertainments were to be found, supposing there were any, and he coloured a bit and shuffled and said:
“Well, there are the Chinese processions – but not many people would care to be seen looking at them, I dare say. They begin in the – ahem – native quarter, you know.”
“By George,” says I, “that’s bad. Perhaps we could look at ’em for just a moment, though – we needn’t stay long.”
He didn’t care for it, but I prevailed on him, and we hurried down to the promenade, with him muttering that it wasn’t at all the thing, and