Flashman's Lady by George MacDonald Fraser

Author:George MacDonald Fraser [Fraser, George MacDonald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101633861
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

[End of extract—and a most malicious libel on a good and honest Parent who, whatever his faults, deserved kinder usage from an Ungrateful Child whom he indulged far too much ! !—G. de R.]

*Malay chess, an interesting variant of the game in which the king can make the knight’s move when checked.

*Early morning tea.

I was back in Patusan just a few years ago, and it’s changed beyond belief. Now, past the bend of the river, there is a sleepy, warm little village of bamboo huts and booths, hemmed in by towering jungle trees, drowsing in the sunlight; fowls scratching in the dirt, women cooking, and no greater activity than a child tumbling and crying. However much I walked round, and squinted at it from odd angles, I couldn’t match it to my memory of bristling stockades along the banks, with five mighty wooden forts fringing the great clearing—the jungle must have been farther back then, and even the river has changed: it is broad and placid now, but I remember it narrow and choppy, and everything more cramped and enclosed; even the sky seems farther away nowadays, and there’s a great peace where once there was pandemonium of smoke and gunfire and rending timber and bloody water.

They were waiting for us when we swept round the bend in line abreast. Phlegethon and the rocket-praus leading, with our spy-boats lurking under the counters waiting to strike. Although it was broad dawn you couldn’t see the water at all; there was a blanket of mist a yard deep on its surface, cutting off not only sight but sound, so that even the Phlegethon’s wheel gave only a muffled thump as it hit the water, and the splash of the sweeps was a dull, continuous churning as we ploughed the fog.

There was a huge log-boom just visible above the mist fifty yards ahead, and beyond it a sight to freeze your blood—from bank to bank, a line of great war-praus, swarming with armed men, pennants hanging from their masts, skull-fringes bobbing, and as we came into view, a hideous yell going up from every deck, the war-gongs booming, and that d---l’s horde shaking their fists and brandishing their weapons. It was taken up from the manned stockades on the right bank, and the wooden forts behind—and then the fort guns and the praus’ bow-chasers belched smoke, and the air was thick with screaming shot, whining overhead, driving up jets of water from the misty surface or crashing home into the timbers of our craft. The rocket-praus fired back, and in a moment the still air was criss-crossed with the smoky vapour trails, and the pirate battle-line shuddered under the pounding of the Congreves; shattering explosions on their decks, bursts of flame and smoke, men diving from their upper works, and then their cannon roaring back again, turning the narrow river into an inferno of noise and destruction.

“Spy-boats away!” bawls Brooke from the Phlegethon’s rail, and out from under the counters raced half a

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