The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
stand in defence not only of the fort, but of his country’s honour. For he was found, in the last extremity, with the colours clutched to his broken body, his face to the foemen, defiant even unto death.’”
Hallelujah and good-night, sweet prince, says I to myself, what a shame I hadn’t a broken sword and a ring of my slain around me. But I thought too soon.
“‘The bodies of his enemies lay before him,’” says old Bob, “‘At first it was thought he was dead, but to our great joy it was discovered that the flame of life still flickered. I cannot think that there was ever a nobler deed than this, and I only wish that our countrymen at home might have seen it, and learned with what selfless devotion their honour is protected even at the ends of the earth. It was heroic! and I trust that Lieutenant Flashman’s name will be remembered in every home in England. Whatever may be said of the disasters that have befallen us here, his valour is testimony that the spirit of our young manhood is no whit less ardent than that of their predecessors who, in Pitt’s words, saved Europe by their example.’”
Well, thinks I, if that’s how we won the battle of Waterloo, thank God the French don’t know or we shall have them at us again. Who ever heard such humbug? But it was glorious to listen to, mind you, and I glowed at the thought of it. This was fame! I didn’t understand, then, how the news of Kabul and Gandamack would make England shudder, and how that vastly conceited and indignant public would clutch at any straw that might heal their national pride and enable them to repeat the old and nonsensical lie that one Englishman is worth twenty foreigners. But I could still guess what effect Sale’s report would have on a new Governor-General, and through him on the government and country, especially by contrast with the accounts of the inglorious shambles by Elphy and McNaghten that must now be on their way home.
All I must do was be modest and manly and wait for the laurel wreaths.
Sale had shoved his copy of the letter back in his pocket, and was looking at me all moist and admiring. Havelock was stern; I guessed he thought Sale was laying it on a deal too thick, but he couldn’t say so. (I gathered later that the defence of Piper’s Fort wasn’t quite so important to Jallalabad as Fighting Bob imagined; it was his own hesitation that made him hold off so long attacking Akbar, and in fact he might have relieved us sooner.)
It was up to me, so I looked Sale in the eye, man to man.
“You’ve done us great credit, sir,” says I. “Thank’ee. For the garrison, it’s no less then they deserve, but for myself, well you make it sound … a bit too much like St George and the Dragon, if you don’t mind my saying so. I just … well, pitched in with the rest, sir, that was all.”
Even Havelock smiled at this plain, manly talk, and Sale nearly burst with pride and said it was the grandest thing, by heaven, and the whole garrison was full of it. Then he sobered down, and asked me to tell him how I had come to Piper’s Fort, and what had happened to separate Hudson and me from the army. Elphy was still in Akbar’s hands, along with Shelton and Mackenzie and the married folk, but for the rest they had thought them all wiped out except Brydon, who had come galloping in alone with a broken sabre trailing from his wrist.
With Havelock’s eye on me I kept it brief and truthful. We had come adrift from the army in the fighting about Jugdulluk, I said, had escaped by inches through the gullies with Ghazis pursuing us, and had tried to rejoin the army at Gandamack, but had only been in time to see it slaughtered. I described the scene accurately, with old Bob groaning and damning and Havelock frowning like a stone idol, and then told how we had been captured and imprisoned by Afridis. They had flogged me to make me give information about the Kandahar force and other matters, but thank God I had told them nothing (“bravo!” says old Bob), and had managed to slip my fetters the same night. I had released Hudson and together we had cut our way past our captors and escaped.
I said nothing of Narreeman – least said soonest mended – but concluded with an account of how we had skulked through the Afghan army, and then ridden into the fort hell-for-leather.
There I left it, and old Bob exclaimed again about courage and endurance, but what reassured me most was that Havelock, without a word, shook my right hand in both of his. I can say that I told it well – off-hand, but not over-modest; just a blunt soldier reporting to his seniors. It calls for nice judgement, this art of bragging; you must be plain, but not too plain, and you must smile only rarely. Letting them guess more than you say is the kernel of it, and looking uncomfortable when they compliment you.
They spread the tale, of course, and in the next few days I don’t suppose there was an officer of the garrison who didn’t come in to shake hands and congratulate me on coming through safe. George Broadfoot was among the first, all red whiskers and spectacles, beaming and telling me what a devil of a fellow I was – and this from Broadfoot, mind you, whom the Afghans called a brave among braves. To have people like him and Mayne and Fighting Bob making much of me – well, it was first-rate, I can tell you, and my conscience didn’t trouble me a bit. Why should it? I didn’t ask for their golden opinions; I just didn’t contradict ’em. Who would?
It was altogether a splendid few weeks. While I lay nursing my leg, the siege of Jallalabad petered out, and Sale finally made another sortie that scattered the Afghan army to the winds. A few days after that Pollock arrived with the relief force from Peshawar, and the garrison band piped them in amongst universal cheering. Of course, I was on hand; they carried me out on to the verandah, and I saw Pollock march in. Later that evening Sale brought him to see me, and expounded my gallantries once again, to my great embarrassment, of course. Pollock swore it was tremendous, and vowed to avenge me when he marched on to Kabul; Sale was going with him to clear the passes, bring Akbar to book, if possible, and release the prisoners – who included Lady Sale – should they still be alive.
“You can stay here and take your well-earned repose while your leg mends,” says Fighting Bob, at which I decided a scowl and a mutter might be appropriate.
“I’d rather come along,” says I. “Damn this infernal leg.”
“Why, hold on,” laughs Sale, “we’d have to carry you in a palankeen. Haven’t you had enough of Afghanistan?”
“Not while Akbar Khan’s above ground,” says I. “I’d like to take these splints and make him eat ’em.”
They laughed at this, and Broadfoot, who was there, cries out:
“He’s an old war-horse already, our Flashy. Ye want tae be in at the death, don’t ye, ye great carl? Aye, well, ye can leave Akbar tae us; forbye, I doubt if the action we’ll find about Kabul will be lively enough for your taste.”
They went off, and I heard Broadfoot telling Pollock what a madman I was when it came to a fight – “when we were fighting in the passes, it was Flashman every time that was sent out as galloper to us with messages; ye would see him fleein’ over the sangars like a daft Ghazi, and aye wi’ a pack o’ hostiles howling at his heels. He minded them no more than flies.”
That was what he made out of the one inglorious occasion when I had been chased for my life into his encampment. But you will have noticed, no doubt, that when a man has a reputation good or bad, folk will always delight in adding to it; there wasn’t a man in Afghanistan who knew me but who wanted to recall having seen me doing something desperate, and Broadfoot, quite sincerely, was like all the rest.
Pollock and Sale didn’t catch Akbar, as it turned out, but they did release the prisoners he had taken, and the army’s arrival in Kabul quieted the country. There was no question of serious reprisals; having been once bitten, we were not looking for trouble a second time. The one prisoner they didn’t release, though, was old Elphy Bey; he had died in captivity, worn out and despairing, and there was a general grief in which I, for one, didn’t share. No doubt he was a kindly old stick, but he was a damned disaster as a commander. He, above all others, murdered the army of Afghanistan, and when I reckon up the odds against my own survival in that mess – well, it wasn’t Elphy’s fault that I came through.
But while all these stirring things were happening, while the Afghans were skulking back into their hills, and Sale and Pollock and Nott were