The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
our praus and theirs, in one continuous h---lish din of explosion and crashing timber, punctuated by screams of wounded men and bellowed commands.
You couldn’t hear yourself think, but at such times it’s best not to, anyway. I was at Brooke’s elbow, straining every nerve to keep his body between mine and the enemy’s fire without being too obvious about it. Now he was directing our musketeers’ fire from the Phlegethon’s bow, to cover our spy-boatmen, who were fighting furiously to drive the pirates from the boom so that the great binding-ropes could be cut and the boom broken to give our vessels passage; I flung myself down, yelling nonsense, between two of our riflemen, seizing a piece myself and making great play at loading it. Brooke, on his feet, was walking from man to man, pointing out targets.
“That one in the yellow scarf – lively, now! Got him! The big fellow with the spear – the Malay beyond Paitingi – there, now, the fat one in the stern of yon canoe. Blaze away, boys! They’re failing – go on, Stuart, get the axes going on those cables! Come on, Flashman, off we go!”
He slapped me on the shoulder – just when I’d got myself nice and snug behind the sandbags, too – and perforce I had to tumble after him over the Phlegethon’s side into the Jolly Bachelor, which was bobbing alongside, packed with Dido’s men. I heard a shot clang on the Phlegethon’s plates just above my head as I went sprawling into the sloop, and then hands were hauling me upright, and a bearded tar was grinning and yelling: “’Ere we go, sir! Twice round the light’ouse for a penny!” I plunged after Brooke, stumbling over the cursing, cheering men who squatted on the deck, and fetched up beside him near the bow-chaser, where he was trying to make himself heard above the din, and pointing ahead.
We were driving in towards the boom, under a canopy of rocket-smoke, and now the gunfire was dispersing the mist, and you could see the oily water, already littered with broken timbers, and even a body here and there, rolling limp. On the boom it was a hand-to-hand mêlée between the pirate canoes and our spy-boatmen, a slippering, slashing dog-fight of glittering parangs and thrusting spears, with crashing musketry at point-blank range over the logs. I saw Paitingi, erect on the boom, laying about him with a broken oar; Stuart, holding off a naked pirate with his cutlass, shielding two Chinese who were swinging their axes at the great rattan cables securing the boom. Even as I watched, the cables parted, and the logs rolled, sending friend and foe headlong into the water; the Jolly Bachelor gave a great yell of triumph, and we were heading for the gap, into the smoke, while from our bow a blue light went up to signal the praus.
There was a frantic five minutes while we backed water in the space between the broken sides of the boom, Brooke and the bow-chaser crew spraying grape ahead of us, and the rest of us banging away at anything that looked like a hostile shape, either on the boom itself or in the canoes beyond. I used my Colt sparingly, crouched down by the bulwark, and keeping as well snuggled into the mob of tars as possible; once, when a canoe came surging out of the smoke, with a great yellow d---l in a quilted tunic and spiked helmet in the prow, brandishing a barbed lance, I took a steady sight and missed him twice, but my third shot got him clean amidships as he was preparing to leap for our rail, and he tumbled into the water.
“Bravo, Flashman!” cries Brooke. “Here, come up beside me!” And there I was again, red in the face with panic, stumbling up beside him as he leaned over the side, helping to haul Stuart out of the water – he’d swum from the broken boom, and was gasping on the deck, sodden wet, with a trickle of blood running from his left sleeve.
“Steady all!” roars Brooke. “Ready, oarsmen! Every musket primed? Right, hold on, there! Wait for the praus!”
Beyond the tangle of wreckage and foundering canoes, beyond the struggling swimmers and floating bodies, the two ends of the boom were now a good fifty yards apart, drifting slowly behind us on the current. The spy-boats had done their work, and our praus were moving ahead under their sweeps, coming up into line, half a dozen on either side, while the rocket-praus, farther back, were still cannonading away at the pirate line, perhaps two cables’ lengths ahead. Three or four of them were burning furiously, and a great reek of black smoke was surging down river towards us, but their line was still solid, and their bow guns fired steadily, sending up clouds of water round our praus and battering their upper works. Between them and us their canoes were in retreat, scurrying for the safety of the larger craft; Brooke nodded with satisfaction.
“So far, so good!” cries he, and standing up in the bows, he waved his hat. “Now then, you fellows, put your backs into it! Two blue lights, there – signal the advance! Cutlasses and small arms, everyone – tally-ho!”
The blue-jackets yelled and stamped, and as the blue lights went up the cheering spread along our line, and on either side the praus drove forward, bow-chasers blazing away, musketeers firing from the platforms, the crews crowding forward to the bows. As our line steadied the gunfire rose to a new crescendo; we were crouching down as the shot whined above us, and suddenly there was an appalling smash, a chorus of shrieks, and I found myself sodden with blood, staring in horror at two legs and half a body thrashing feebly on the deck in front of me, where an instant before a seaman had been ramming shot into the bow-chaser. I sat down heavily, pawing at the disgusting mess, and then Brooke had me on my feet again, yelling to know if I was all right, and I was yelling back that the corn on my big toe was giving me h--l – G-d knows why one says these things, but he gave a wild laugh and pushed me forward to the bow rail. I crouched down, shuddering and ready to vomit, helpless with fear – but who would have recognized it then?
Suddenly the cannonading died, and for a few seconds there was a silence in which you could hear the water chuckling under the Jolly Bachelor’s forefoot as she went gliding forward. Then the musketry crashed out again, as our sharpshooters on the praus poured their fire into the pirate line, and the pirates gave us back volley for volley. Thank G-d the Jolly Bachelor was too low and too close now for them to get at us with cannon, but as we drove in towards them the water either side was boiling with their small shot, and behind me there were cries and oaths of men hit; our whole line was charging across the water, praus on the flanks, Jolly Bachelor in the centre, towards the pirate vessels; they were barely fifty yards off, and I could only stare in horror at the nearest one, dead ahead, the platform which jutted out from her rails crowded with savage howling faces, brandished steel, and smoking barrels – “They’ll shoot us to pieces! We’ll founder – Jesus loves me!” someone was shouting, but nobody heard me in that fearful din. A seaman at my elbow screamed and stood up, tearing at a sumpitan dart in his arm; as I dived for the cover of the rail another stood quivering in a cable a foot from my face; Brooke leaned over, grinning, snapped it off, tossed it away, and then did an unbelievable thing. I didn’t credit it then, and scarcely do now, but it’s a fact.
He stood up, full height in the bows, one foot on the rail, threw away his straw hat, and folded his arms, staring straight ahead at that yelling, grimacing Death that was launching shot, steel, and poisoned arrows at us in clouds. He was smiling serenely, and seemed to be saying something. “Get down, you mad b----r!” I shouted, but he never even heard, and then I realized that he wasn’t speaking – he was singing. Above the crash of musketry, the whistle and thump of those horrid darts, the screams and the yells, you could hear it:
“Come, cheer up, my lads,
’Tis to glory we steer,
To add something new
To this wonderful year—”
He was turning now, one hand on a stay for balance, thumping the time with his other fist, his face alight with laughter, roaring to us to sing – and from the mob behind it came thundering out:
“Heart of oak are our ships,
Jolly tars are our men,
We always are ready,
Steady, boys, steady,
We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again!”
The Jolly Bachelor shuddered in the water as we scraped under the platform of the pirate prau, and then shrieking, slashing figures were dropping among us; I went sprawling on the deck, with