The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
the second spy-boat, a hundred yards in our wake, and snapped an order to the paddlers to increase their stroke. The spy surged ahead, trembling beneath us; Stuart looked back anxiously at the widening gap.
“J.B. said not more than a pistol-shot ahead,” says he, and Paitingi rounded on him.
“If J.B. has his way, we’ll spring the trap wi’ our whole fleet! Then where’ll he be? D’ye think he kens more about handling a spy-boat than I do?”
“But we’re to hold steady till we come up with the Sulu Queen—”
“Shaitan take the Sulu Queen! She’s lying up in one o’ these creeks, whatever J.B. likes tae think. They’re not ahead of us, I tell ye – they’re either side! Sit doon, d--n ye!” he snaps at me. “Stuart! Pass the word – port paddles be ready to back water at my signal. Keep the stroke going! We’ll win him a half-mile of water to manoeuvre in, if we’re lucky! Steady – and wait for my word!”
I couldn’t make anything of this, but it was plainly dreadful news. By what he said, we were inside the jaws of the trap already, and the woods full of hidden fiends waiting to pounce, and he was forging ahead to spring the ambush before the rest of our boats got well inside. I sat gagging with fear, staring at that silent wall of leaves, at the eddies swirling round the approaching bend, at Paitingi’s broad back as he crouched over the prow. The river had narrowed sharply in the last mile, to a bare hundred paces or so; the banks were so close I imagined I could see through the nearest trees, into the dark shadows beyond – was there something stirring there, could I hear some awful presence? – the spy-boat was fairly flying round the bend, and behind us the river was empty for a couple of furlongs, we were alone, far ahead—
“Now!” roars Paitingi, dropping to his knees and clutching the gunwales, and as the port paddlers backed water the spy-boat spun crazily on her heel, her bow rearing clear out of the water so that we had to cling like grim death to avoid being hurled out. For an awful instant she hung suspended at a fearful angle, with the water a good six feet beneath my left elbow, then she came smashing down as though she would plunge to the bottom, wallowed with the water washing over her sides – and we were round and driving downriver, with Paitingi yelling to us to bale for our lives.
The water was ankle deep as I scooped at it with my hat, dashing it over the side; the paddlers were gasping like leaky engines, the current helping to scud us along at a frightening pace – and then there was a yell from Paitingi, I raised my head to look, and saw a sight that froze me in my seat.
A hundred yards ahead, downriver, something was moving from the tangle of the bank – a raft, poling slowly out on the bosom of the stream, crowded with men. At the same moment there was a great rending, tearing noise from the jungle on the opposite bank; the forest seemed to be moving slowly outward, and then it detached itself into one huge tree, a mass of tangled green, falling ponderously with a mighty splash to block a third of the stream on our port bow. From the jungle either side came the sudden thunderous boom of war-gongs; behind the first raft another was setting out; there were small canoes sprouting like black fingers from the banks ahead, each loaded with savages – where a moment since the river had been silent and empty it was now vomiting a horde of pirate craft, baying their war-cries, their boats alive with steel and yelling, cruel faces, cutting us off, swarming towards us. There were others on the banks on our beams, archers and blowpipemen; the whist-whist-whist of shafts came lancing towards us.
“There – ye see?” roars Paitingi. “Whaur’s your clever J.B. now, Stuart? Sulu Queen, says he! Aye, weel, he’s got clear water tae work in – small thanks to himsel’! These sons o’ Eblis looked to trap a fleet – they’ve got one wee spy-boat!” And he stood up, roaring with laughter and defiance. “Drive for the gap, steersman! On, on! Charge!”
There are moments in life which defy description – in my black moods they seem to have occurred about once a week, and I have difficulty distinguishing them. The last minutes at Balaclava, the moment when the Welsh broke at Little Hand Rock and the Zulus came bounding over our position, the breaching of Piper’s Fort gate, the neck-or-nothing race for Reno’s Bluff with the Sioux braves running among the shattered rabble of Custer’s Seventh – I’ve stretched my legs in all of those, knowing I was going to die, and being d----d noisy at the prospect. But in Paitingi’s spy-boat running was impossible – so, depressingly, was surrender. I observed those flat, evil faces sweeping down on us behind their glittering lance-heads and kampilans, and decided they weren’t open to discussion; there was nothing for it but to sit and blaze away in panic – and then a red-hot pain shot through my left ribs, and I looked down bewildered to see a sumpitan shaft in my side. Yellow, it was, with a little black tuft of lint on its butt, and I pawed at it, whimpering, until Stuart reached over and wrenched it clear, to my considerable discomfort. I screamed, twisted, and went over the side.
I dare say it was that that saved me, although I’m blessed if I know how. I took a glance at the official account of the action before I wrote this, and evidently the historian had a similar difficulty in believing that anyone survived our little water-party, for he states flatly that every man-jack of Paitingi’s crew was slaughtered. He notes that they had got too far ahead, were cut off by a sudden ambush of rafts and praus, and by the time Brooke’s fleet had come storming up belatedly to the rescue, Paitingi and his followers had all been killed – there’s a graphic account of twenty boats jammed together in a bloody mêlée, of thousands of pirates yelling on the bank, of the stream running crimson, with headless corpses, wreckage, and capsized craft drifting downstream – but never a word about poor old Flashy struggling half-foundered, dyeing the water with his precious gore, spluttering “Wait, you callous b-----s, I’m sinking!” Quite hurtful, being ignored like that, although I was glad enough of it at the time, when I saw how things were shaping.
It was, I’ve since gathered, touch and go that Brooke’s whole fleet wasn’t wiped out; indeed, if it hadn’t been for Paitingi’s racing ahead, sacrificing his spy-boat like the gallant idiot he was, the pirates would have jumped the whole expedition together, but as it was, Brooke had time to dress his boats into line and charge in good order. It was a horrid near-run thing, though; Keppel confessed later that when he saw the fighting horde that was waiting for him, “for a moment I was at a loss what steps to take” – and there was one chap, treading water upstream with a hole in his belly and roaring for succour, who shared his sentiments exactly. I was viewing the action from t’other side, so to speak, but it looked just as confused and interesting to me as it did to Keppel. I was busy, of course, holding my wounded guts with one hand and clutching at a piece of wreckage with the other, trying to avoid being run down by boats full of ill-disposed persons with swords, but as I came up for the tenth time, I saw the last seconds of Paitingi’s spy-boat, crashing into the heart of the enemy, its bow-gun exploding to tear a bloody cleft through the crew of a raft.
Then the pirate wave swept over them; I had a glimpse of Stuart, stuck like a pin-cushion with sumpitan darts, toppling into the water; of a Linga swordsman clearing a space with his kampilan swinging in a shining circle round his head; of another in the water, stabbing fiercely up at the foes above him; of the steersman, on hands and knees on the raft, being hacked literally into bits by a screaming crowd of pirates; of Paitingi, a bristling, red giant, his turban gone, roaring “Allah-il-Allah!” with a pirate swung up in his huge arms – and then there was just the shell of the spy-boat, overturned, in the swirling, bloody water, with the pirate boats surging away from it, turning to meet the distant, unseen enemy downstream.
I didn’t have time to see any more. The water was roaring in my ears, I could feel my strength ebbing away through the tortured wound in my side, my fingers slipping from their grip on the wreckage, the sky and treetops were spinning slowly overhead, and across the surface of the water something – a boat? a raft? – was racing down on me with a clamour of voices. Air and water were full of the throbbing of war-gongs, and then I was hit a violent blow on the head, something scraped agonizingly over my body, forcing me down, choking with water, my ears pounding, lungs bursting … And then, as old Wild Bill would have said: “Why, boys – I drowned!”32