The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
then the praus, in double column, their sails spread and the great sweeps thrashing the water, with the smaller sampans and canoes in tow; the Dido’s pinnace and the Jolly Bachelor under sail, and last, shepherding the flock, the steamer Phlegethon, her big wheel thumping up the spray, with Brooke strutting under her awning, monarch of all he surveyed, discoursing to the admiring Flashy. (It wasn’t that I sought his company, but since I had to go along, I’d figured it would be safest to stick close by him, on the biggest boat available; something told me that whoever came home feet first, it wasn’t going to be him, and the rations would probably be better. So I toadied him in my best style, and he bored me breathless in return.)
“There’s something better than inspecting stirrup straps on Horse Guards!” cries he gaily, flourishing a hand at our fleet driving over the sunlit sea. “What more could a man ask, eh! – a solid deck beneath, the old flag above, stout fellows alongside, and a bitter foe ahead. That’s the life, my boy!” It seemed to me it was more likely to be the death, but of course I just grinned and agreed that it was capital. “And a good cause to fight in,” he went on. “Wrongs to punish, Sarawak to defend – and your lady to rescue, of course. Aye, it’ll be a sweeter, cleaner coast by the time we’ve done with it.”
I asked him if he meant to devote his life to chasing pirates, and he came all over solemn, gazing out over the sea with the wind ruffling his hair.
“It may well be a life’s work,” says he. “You see, what our people at home will not understand is that a pirate here is not a criminal, in our sense; piracy is the profession of the Islands, their way of life – just as trading or keeping shop is with Englishmen. So it is not a question of rooting out a few scoundrels, but of changing the minds of whole nations, and turning them to honest, peaceful pursuits.” He laughed and shook his head. “It will not be easy – d’you know what one of them said to me once? – and this was a well-travelled, intelligent head-man – he said: ‘I know your British system is good, tuan besar, I have seen Singapura and your soldiers and traders and great ships. But I was brought up to plunder, and I laugh when I think that I have fleeced a peaceful tribe right down to their cooking-pots.’ Now, what d’you do with such a fellow?”
“Hang him,” says Wade, who was sitting on the deck with little Charlie Johnson, one of Brooke’s people,24 playing main chatter.a “That was Makota, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, Makota,” says Brooke, “and he was the finest of ’em. One of the stoutest friends and allies I ever had – until he deserted to join the Sadong slavers. Now he supplies labourers and concubines to the coast princes who are meant to be our allies, but who deal secretly with the pirates for fear and profit. That’s the kind of thing we have to fight, quite apart from the pirates themselves.”
“Why d’you do it?” I asked, for in spite of what Stuart had told me, I wanted to hear it from the man himself; I always suspect these buccaneer-crusaders, you see. “I mean, you have Sarawak; don’t that keep you busy enough?”
“It’s a duty,” says he, as one might say it was warm for the time of year. “I suppose it began with Sarawak, which at first seemed to me like a foundling, which I protected with hesitation and doubt, but it has repaid my trouble. I have freed its people and its trade, given it a code of laws, encouraged industry and Chinese immigration, imposed only the lightest of taxes, and protected it from the pirates. Oh, I could make a fortune from it, but I content myself with a little – I’m either a man of worth, you see, or a mere adventurer after gain, and God forbid I should ever be that. But I’m well rewarded,” says he blandly, “for all the good that I do ministers to my satisfaction.”
Pity you couldn’t set it to music and sing it as an anthem, thinks I. Old Arnold would have loved it. But all I said was that it was undoubtedly God’s work, and it was a crying shame that it went unrecognized; worth a knighthood at least, I’d have said.
“Titles?” cries he, smiling. “They’re like fine clothes, penny trumpets, and turtle soup – all of slight but equal value. No, no, I’m too quiet to be a hero. All my wish is for the good of Borneo and its people – I’ve shown what can be done here, but it is for our government at home to decide what means, if any, they put at my disposal to extend and develop my work.” His eyes took on that glitter that you see in camp-meeting preachers and company accountants. “I’ve only touched the surface here – I want to open the interior of this amazing land, to exploit it for the benefit of its people, to correct the native character, to improve their lot. But you know our politicians and departments – they don’t care for foreign ventures, and they’re jolly wary of me, I can tell you.”
He laughed again. “They suspect me of being up to some job or other, for my own good. And what can I tell ’em? – they don’t know the country, and the only visits I ever get are brief and official. Well, what can an admiral learn in a week? If I’d any sense I’d vamp up a prospectus, get a board of directors, and hold public meetings. ‘Borneo Limited’, what? That’d interest ’em, all right! But it would be the wrong thing, you see – and it’d only convince the government that I’m a filibuster myself – Blackbeard Teach with a clean shirt on. No, no, it wouldn’t do.” He sighed. “Yet how proud I should be, some day, to see Sarawak, and all Borneo, under the British flag – for their good, not ours. It may never happen, more’s the pity – but in the meantime, I have my duty to Sarawak and its people. I’m their only protector, and if I leave my life in the business, well, I shall have died nobly.”
Well, I’ve seen pure-minded complacency in my time, and done a fair bit in that line myself, when occasion demanded, but J.B. certainly beat all. Mind you, unlike most Arnoldian hypocrites, I think he truly believed what he said; at least, he was fool enough to live up to it, so far as I could see, which is consistent with my conclusion that he was off his head. And when you remember that he excited the wrath of Gladstone25 – well, that speaks volumes in a chap’s favour, doesn’t it? But at the time I was just noting him down as another smug, lying, psalm-smiter devoted to prayer and profit, when he went and spoiled it all by bursting into laughter and saying:
“Mind you, if it’s in a good cause, it’s still the greatest fun! I don’t know that I’d enjoy the protection and improvement of Sarawak above half, if it didn’t involve fighting these piratical, head-taking vagabonds! It’s just my good luck that duty combines with pleasure – maybe I’m not so different from Makota and the rest of these villains after all. They go a-roving for lust and plunder, and I go for justice and duty. It’s a nice point, don’t you think? You’ll think me crazy, I dare say” – he little knew how right he was – “but sometimes I think that rascals like Sharif Sahib and Suleiman Usman and the Balagnini sea-wolves are the best friends I’ve got. Perhaps our radical MPs are right, and I’m just a pirate at heart.”
“Well, you look enough like one, J.B.,” says Wade, getting up from the board. “Main chatter, sheikh matter – it’s my game, Charlie.” He came to the rail and pointed, laughing, at the Dyaks and Malay savages who were swarming on the platform of the prau just ahead of us. “They don’t look exactly like a Sunday School treat, do they, Flashman? Pirates, if you like!”
“Flashman hasn’t seen real pirates yet,” says Brooke. “He’ll see the difference then.”
I did, too, and before the day was out. We cruised swiftly along the coast all day, before the warm breeze, while the sun swung over and dropped like a blood-red rose behind us, and with the cooler air of evening we came at last to the broad estuary of the Batang Lupar. It was miles across, and among the little jungly islands of its western shore we disturbed an anchorage of squalid sailor-folk in weather-beaten sampans – orang laut, the Malays called them, “sea-gipsies”, the vagrants of the coast, who were always running from one debt-collector to another, picking up what living they could.
Paitingi brought their headman, a dirty, bedraggled savage, to the Phlegethon in one of the spy-boats, and after Brooke had talked to him he beckoned me to follow him down into Paitingi’s craft, saying I should get the “feel” of a spy-boat