Flashman and the Dragon. George Fraser MacDonald
astonished, Palmerston would have damned my eyes – and done me dirt, too. And when all was said, it wasn’t liable to be much of a campaign; two or three months, perhaps, in which I’d be well clear of any danger that was going, boozing on the staff, frowning at maps, looking tired and interesting, and moving paper about with my hair becomingly ruffled – oh, I knew my intelligence work, never fear.
So I rolled down to Hong Kong, savouring the revenge I would take on La Belle Phoebe – and what d’you think? She and the gun-running Josiah had cleared out to Singapore, ostensibly to join some missionary society at short notice. A likely tale; give ’em three months and they’d be running the Tongs. But their sudden departure was hardly noticed in a new sensation – Sir Hope Grant had arrived with the advance guard of the fleet and army which was to go up-country, defend Old England’s rights and honour, and teach the Chinks to sing ‘Rule, Britannia’. From Pittan’s Wharf you could see the little white lines of tents where the camp was being laid out on Kowloong, so I decided to tool over and let them see how dam’ lucky they were going to be in their intelligence department.
There were advance parties from all the regiments; the first thing I saw was Sikh riders in the red puggarees of Fane’s Horse and the blue of Probyn’s, tent-pegging on the beach, with white troopers cheering ’em on – and to my astonishment they were Dragoon Guards. God help you if it rains, my lads, thinks I, for with twenty-one stone in each saddle you’ll be up to your bellies in the paddy-mud in no time. It was first-rate mixed cavalry for all that; I watched a bearded, grey-coated sowar, eyes glaring, whip out a peg and wheel away to yells and cheering, and was glad I wasn’t a Manchoo Tartar.
It was the infantry coats I wanted to see, though, for (and I’m a horse-soldier as says it) I know what matters. When the guns haven’t come up, and your cavalry’s checked by close country or tutti-putti, and you’re waiting in the hot, dusty hush for the faint rumble of impi or harka over the skyline and know they’re twenty to your one – well, that’s when you realise that it all hangs on that double line of yokels and town scruff with their fifty rounds a man and an Enfield bayonet. Kitchener himself may have placed ’em just so, with D’Israeli’s sanction, The Times’ blessing, and the Queen waving ’em goodbye – but now it’s their grip on the stock, and their eye at the backsight, and if they break, you’re done. Haven’t I stood shivering behind ’em often enough, wishing I could steal a horse from somewhere? Aye, and if I’m still here it’s because they seldom broke in my time.
So it was with some satisfaction that I noted facings and markers – the old 60th Royal Americans, the Buffs, a fatigue party of the 44th – I felt a cold shudder at the memory of the bloody snow by Gandamack, the starved handful of survivors, and Soutar with the Colours of this same 44th wrapped round his waist as the Ghazis closed in for the kill. Well, we’d have a few Ghazis on our side this time; there were whiskered Pathans chattering round a camp-kettle, so I took a chapatti and a handful of chillis, gave the time of day to a naik with the Sobraon medal, and passed on, drawn by the distant pig-squeal of pipes which always makes my dear wife burst into tears – ah, we’ve our own home-grown savages in tow, have we, thinks I. But they weren’t Highlanders, just the Royals.
Theirs wasn’t the only music on Kowloong, neither. I loafed up to the big tent with the flag, whence came the most hideous, droning, booming din; there was a staff-walloper climbing aboard his Waler, a couple of Maharatta sentries on the fly, and a slim young fellow with a fair moustache sitting on a camp-stool, sketching. I came up on his blind side, just for devilment, and he started round angrily.
‘How often have I told you never to—’ he was beginning, and then his good eye opened wide in amazement. ‘Flashman! My dear fellow! Wherever did you spring from?’
‘Here and there, Joe,’ says I. ‘The Mad Musician is within?’
‘What? Here, I say! You can’t go in just now, you know – he’s composing!’
‘Decomposing, by the sound of it,’ says I, and stuck my head in at the fly. Sure enough, there was the lean, gaunt figure, in its shirt-sleeves, sawing away like a thing demented at a great bull fiddle, glaring at a sheet of music which he was marking between scrapes, and tugging at his bristling grey whiskers, to stimulate the muse, no doubt. I flipped a coin into a glass on the table.
‘Move on to the next street, my good man, will you?’ says I. ‘You’re disturbing the peace.’
Being a sensitive artist – and a major-general – he should have gone up three feet and come down spluttering. But this one had no nerves to begin with, and more mastery of himself than a Yogi. He didn’t so much as twitch – for a second I wondered if he hadn’t heard me – and then he played another chord, jotted it on his manuscript, and spoke without turning his head.
‘Flashman.’ Another chord, and he put his fiddle by and turned to fix me with those wild, pale eyes that I hadn’t seen since Allahabad, when Campbell pinned the Cross on me. ‘Very good, Wolseley,’ says he to Joe, who was fidgeting behind me. He took my hand in his bony grip, nodded me to a stool – and then he stood and looked at me for two solid minutes without saying a word.
Now, I tell you that in detail to show you what kind of a man was Major-General Sir James Hope Grant. You don’t hear much of him nowadays; Wolseley, the boy who was sketching at the door, has ten times the name and fame6 – but in my time Grant was a man apart. He wasn’t much of a general; it was notorious he’d never read a line outside the Bible; he was so inarticulate he could barely utter any order but ‘Charge!’; his notions of discipline were to flog anything that moved; the only genius he possessed was for his bull fiddle; he could barely read a map, and the only spark of originality he’d ever shown was to get himself six months in close tack for calling his colonel a drunkard. But none of this mattered in the least because, you see, Hope Grant was the best fighting man in the world.
I’m no hero-worshipper, as you may have gathered, and my view of the military virtues is that the best thing you can do with ’em is to hang them on the wall in Bedlam – but I know cold fact when I see it. With sword, lance, or any kind of side-arm he was the most expert, deadly practitioner that ever breathed; as a leader of irregular cavalry he left Stuart, Hodson, Custer, and the rest at the gate; in the Mutiny he had simply fought the whole damned time with a continuous fury that was the talk of an army containing the likes of Sam Browne, John Nicholson, and (dare I say it?) my vaunted but unworthy self. Worshipped by the rank and file, naturally; he was a kindly soul, for all they called him the ‘Provost-Marshal’, and even charming if you don’t mind ten-minute silences. But as a hand-to-hand blood-spiller it was Eclipse first and the rest nowhere.7
He thought I was another of the same, never having seen me in action but believing what he was told, and we’d got on pretty well, considering my natural levity and insolence. He couldn’t make this out at all, and I’d been told on good authority that he thought I was insane – the pot calling the kettle ‘Grimy arse’, if you ask me. But it meant that he treated me as a wild, half-witted child, and grinned at my jokes in a wary sort of way.
So now he asked me how I did, pushed coffee and biscuits at me (no booze for maniacs, you see), and without any preamble gave me his views on the forthcoming campaign. This was what I’d come for: twenty words from Grant (and you were lucky if you got that many) were worth twenty thousand from another. I knew the rough of it – twelve thousand of ourselves and five thousand French to escort Elgin and the Frog envoy, Gros, to Pekin, in the teeth of frenzied Chinese diplomatic (and possibly military) opposition. Grant was fairly garrulous, for him.
‘Shared command. Montauban and I. Day about. Lamentable.’ Pause. ‘Supply difficult. Forage all imported. No horses to be had. Brought our own from India. Not the French. Have to buy ’em. Japan ponies. Vicious beasts. Die like flies.’ Another pause. ‘French disturb me. No experience. Great campaigns, Peninsula, Crimea. Deplorable. No small wars. Delays. Cross purposes. Better by ourselves. Hope Montauban speaks English.’
That would make one of you, thinks I. Would the Chinese fight, I asked, and a long silence fell.
‘Possibly.’