Copyright

Harper

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First published in Great Britain by Collins Harvill 1985

Copyright © George MacDonald Fraser 1985

How Did I Get the Idea of Flashman? © The Beneficiaries of the Literary

Estate of George MacDonald Fraser 2015

Map © John Gilkes 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover illustration © Gino D’Achille

George MacDonald Fraser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780007217212

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007325702

Version: 2015-07-23

The following piece was found in the author’s study in 2013 by the Estate of George MacDonald Fraser.

How did I Get the Idea of Flashman?

‘How did you get the idea of Flashman?’ and ‘When are we going to get his U.S. Civil War memoirs?’ are questions which I have ducked more often than I can count. To the second, my invariable response is ‘Oh, one of these days’. Followed, when the inquirer is an impatient American, by the gentle reminder that to an old British soldier like Flashman the unpleasantness between the States is not quite the most important event of the nineteenth century, but rather a sideshow compared to the Mutiny or Crimea. Before they can get indignant I add hastily that his Civil War itinerary is already mapped out; this is the only way of preventing them from telling me what it ought to be.

To the question, how did I get the idea, I simply reply that I don’t know. Who ever knows? Anthony Hope conceived The Prisoner of Zenda on a walk from Westminster to the Temple, but I doubt if he could have said, after the calendar month it took him to write the book, what triggered the idea. In my case, Flashman came thundering out of the mists of forty years living and dreaming, and while I can list the ingredients that went to his making, heaven only knows how and when they combined.

One thing is sure: the Flashman Papers would never have been written if my fellow clansman Hugh Fraser, Lord Allander, had confirmed me as editor of the Glasgow Herald in 1966. But he didn’t, the canny little bandit, and I won’t say he was wrong. I wouldn’t have lasted in the job, for I’d been trained in a journalistic school where editors were gods, and in three months as acting chief my attitude to management, front office, and directors had been that of a seigneur to his serfs – I had even put Fraser’s entry to the House of Lords on an inside page, assuring him that it was not for the Herald, his own paper, to flaunt his elevation, and that a two-column picture of him was quite big enough. How cavalier can you get?

And doubtless I had other editorial shortcomings. In any event, faced with twenty years as deputy editor (which means doing all the work without getting to the big dinners), I promised my wife I would ‘write us out of it’. In a few weeks of thrashing the typewriter at the kitchen table in the small hours, Flashman was half-finished, and likely to stay that way, for I fell down a waterfall, broke my arm, and lost interest – until my wife asked to read what I had written. Her reaction galvanised me into finishing it, one draft, no revisions, and for the next two years it rebounded from publisher after publisher, British and American.

I can’t blame them: the purported memoir of an unregenerate blackguard, bully, and coward resurrected from a Victorian school story is a pretty eccentric subject. By 1968 I was ready to call it a day, but thanks to my wife’s insistence and George Greenfield’s matchless knowledge of the publishing scene, it found a home at last with Herbert Jenkins, the manuscript looking, to quote Christopher MacLehose, as though it had been round the world twice. It dam’ nearly had.

They published it as it stood, with (to me) bewildering results. It wasn’t a bestseller in the blockbuster sense, but the reviewers were enthusiastic, foreign rights (starting with Finland) were sold, and when it appeared in the U.S.A. one-third of forty-odd critics accepted it as a genuine historical memoir, to the undisguised glee of the New York Times, which wickedly assembled their reviews. ‘The most important discovery since the Boswell Papers’ is the one that haunts me still, for if I was human enough to feel my lower ribs parting under the strain, I was appalled, sort of.

You see, while I had written a straightforward introduction describing the ‘discovery’ of the ‘Papers’ in a saleroom in Ashby-de-la-Zouche (that ought to have warned them), and larded it with editorial ‘foot-notes’, there had been no intent to deceive; for one thing, while I’d done my best to write, first-person, in Victorian style, I’d never imagined that it would fool anybody. Nor did Herbert Jenkins. And fifty British critics had recognised it as a conceit. (The only one who was half-doubtful was my old chief sub on the Herald; called on to review it for another paper, he demanded of the Herald’s literary editor: ‘This book o’ Geordie’s isnae true, is it?’ and on being assured that it wasn’t, exclaimed: ‘The conniving bastard!’, which I still regard as a high compliment.)

With the exception of one left-wing journal which hailed it as a scathing attack on British imperialism, the press and public took Flashman, quite rightly, at face value, as an adventure story dressed up as the memoirs of an unrepentant old cad who, despite his cowardice, depravity and deceit, had managed to emerge from fearful ordeals and perils an acclaimed hero, his only redeeming qualities being his humour and shameless honesty as a memorialist. I was gratified, if slightly puzzled to learn that the great American publisher, Alfred Knopf, had said of the book: ‘I haven’t heard this voice in fifty years’, and that the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police was recommending it to his subordinates. My interest increased as I wrote more Flashman books, and noted the reactions.

I was, several critics agreed, a satirist. Taking revenge on the nineteenth century on behalf of the twentieth, said one. Waging war on Victorian hypocrisy, said another. Plainly under the influence of Conrad, said yet another. A full-page review in a German paper took me flat aback when my eye fell on the word ‘Proust’ in the middle of it. I don’t read German, so for all I know the review may have been maintaining that Proust was a better stand-off half than I was, or used more semi-colons. But there it was, and it makes you think. And a few years ago a highly respected religious journal said that the Flashman Papers deserved recognition as the work of a sensitive moralist, and spoke of service not only to literature and history, but to the study of ethics.

My instant reaction to this was to paraphrase Poins: ‘God send me no worse fortune, but I never said so!’ while feeling delighted that someone else had said it, and then reflecting solemnly that this was a far cry from long nights with cold tea and cigarettes, scheming to get Flashman into the passionate embrace of the Empress of China, or out of the toils of a demented dwarf on the edge of a snake-pit. But now, beyond remarking that the anti-imperial left-winger was sadly off the mark, that the Victorians were mere amateurs in hypocrisy compared to our own brainwashed, sanctimonious, self-censoring and terrified generation, and that I hadn’t read a word of Conrad by 1966 (and my interest in him since has been confined to Under Western Eyes, in the hope that I might persuade Dick Lester to film it as only he could), I have no comments to offer on opinions of my work. I know what I’m doing – at least, I think I do – and the aim is to entertain (myself, for a start) while being true to history, to let Flashman comment on human and inhuman nature, and devil take the romantics and the politically correct revisionists both. But my job is writing, not explaining what I’ve written, and I’m well content and grateful to have others find in Flashy whatever they will (I’ve even had letters psychoanalysing the brute), and return to the question with which I began this article.

A life-long love affair with British imperial adventure, fed on tupenny bloods, the Wolf of Kabul and Lionheart Logan (where are they now?), the Barrack-Room Ballads, films like Lives of a Bengal Lancer and The Four Feathers, and the stout-hearted stories for boys which my father won as school prizes in the 1890s; the discovery, through Scott and Sabatini and Macaulay, that history is one tremendous adventure story; soldiering in Burma, and seeing the twilight of the Raj in all its splendour; a newspaper-trained lust for finding the truth behind the received opinion; being a Highlander from a family that would rather spin yarns than eat … I suppose Flashman was born out of all these things, and from reading Tom Brown’s Schooldays as a child – and having a wayward cast of mind.

Thanks to that contrary streak (I always half-hoped that Rathbone would kill Flynn, confounding convention and turning the story upside down – Basil gets Olivia, Claude Rains triumphs, wow!), I recognised Flashman on sight as the star of Hughes’ book. Fag-roasting rotter and poltroon he might be, he was nevertheless plainly box-office, for he had the looks, swagger and style (‘big and strong’, ‘a bluff, offhand manner’, and ‘considerable powers of being pleasant’, according to his creator) which never fail to cast a glamour on villainy. I suspect Hughes knew it, too, and got rid of him before he could take over the book – which loses all its spirit and zest once Flashy has made his disgraced and drunken exit.

[He was, by the way, a real person; this I learned only recently. A letter exists from one of Hughes’ Rugby contemporaries which is definite on the point, but tactfully does not identify him. I have sometimes speculated about one boy who was at Rugby in Hughes’ day, and who later became a distinguished soldier and something of a ruffian, but since I haven’t a shred of evidence to back up the speculation, I keep it to myself.]

What became of him after Rugby seemed to me an obvious question, which probably first occurred to me when I was about nine, and then waited thirty years for an answer. The Army, inevitably, and since Hughes had given me a starting-point by expelling him in the late 1830s, when Lord Cardigan was in full haw-haw, and the Afghan War was impending … just so. I began with no idea of where the story might take me, but with Victorian history to point the way, and that has been my method ever since: choose an incident or campaign, dig into every contemporary source available, letters, diaries, histories, reports, eye-witness, trivia (and fictions, which like the early Punch are mines of detail), find the milestones for Flashy to follow, more or less, get impatient to be writing, and turn him loose with the research incomplete, digging for it as I go and changing course as history dictates or fancy suggests.

In short, letting history do the work, with an eye open for the unexpected nuggets and coincidences that emerge in the mining process – for example, that the Cabinet were plastered when they took their final resolve on the Crimea, that Pinkerton the detective had been a trade union agitator in the very place where Flashman was stationed in the first book, that Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King had a factual basis, or that Bismarck and Lola Montez were in London in the same week (of 1842, if memory serves, which it often doesn’t: whenever Flashman has been a subject on Mastermind I have invariably scored less than the contestants).

Visiting the scenes helps; I’d not have missed Little Big Horn, the Borneo jungle rivers, Bent’s Fort, or the scruffy, wonderful Gold Road to Samarkand, for anything. Seeking out is half the fun, which is one reason why I decline all offers of help with research (from America, mostly). But the main reason is that I’m a soloist, giving no hints beforehand, even to publishers, and permitting no editorial interference afterwards. It may be tripe, but it’s my tripe – and I do strongly urge authors to resist encroachments on their brain-children, and trust their own judgment rather than that of some zealous meddler with a diploma in creative punctuation who is just dying to get into the act.

One of the great rewards of writing about my old ruffian has been getting and answering letters, and marvelling at the kindness of readers who take the trouble to let me know they have enjoyed his adventures, or that he has cheered them up, or turned them to history. Sitting on the stairs at 4 a.m. talking to a group of students who have phoned from the American Midwest is as gratifying as learning from a university lecturer that he is using Flashman as a teaching aid. Even those who want to write the books for you, or complain that he’s a racist (of course he is; why should he be different from the rest of humanity?), or insist that he isn’t a coward at all, but just modest, and they’re in love with him, are compensated for by the stalwarts who’ve named pubs after him (in Monte Carlo, and somewhere in South Africa, I’m told), or have formed societies in his honour. They’re out there, believe me, the Gandamack Delopers of Oklahoma, and Rowbotham’s Mosstroopers, and the Royal Society of Upper Canada, with appropriate T-shirts.

I have discovered that when you create – or in my case, adopt and develop – a fictional character, and take him through a series of books, an odd thing happens. He assumes, in a strange way, a life of his own. I don’t mean that he takes you over; far from it, he tends to hive off on his own. At any rate, you find that you’re not just writing about him: you are becoming responsible for him. You’re not just his chronicler: you are also his manager, trainer, and public relations man. It’s your own fault – my own fault – for pretending that he’s real, for presenting his adventures as though they were his memoirs, putting him in historical situations, giving him foot-notes and appendices, and inviting the reader to accept him as a historical character. The result is that about half the letters I get treat him as though he were a person in his own right – of course, people who write to me know that he’s nothing of the sort – well, most of them realise it: I occasionally get indignant letters from people complaining that they can’t find him in the Army List or the D.N.B., but nearly all of them know he’s fiction, and when they pretend that he isn’t, they’re just playing the game. I started it, so I can’t complain.

When Hughes axed Flashman from Tom Brown’s Schooldays, brutally and suddenly (on page 170, if I remember rightly), it seemed a pretty callous act to abandon him with all his sins upon him, just at the stage of adolescence when a young fellow needs all the help and understanding he can get. So I adopted him, not from any charitable motives, but because I realised that there was good stuff in the lad, and that with proper care and guidance something could be made out of him.

And I have to say that with all his faults (what am I saying, because of his faults) young Flashy has justified the faith I showed in him. Over the years he and I have gone through several campaigns and assorted adventures, and I can say unhesitatingly that coward, scoundrel, toady, lecher and dissembler though he may be, he is a good man to go into the jungle with.

George MacDonald Fraser

Dedication

For Ka’t-lin

a memento of the Pearl River and Tuah Bee

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

How Did I Get the Idea of Flashman?

Dedication

Explanatory Note

Map

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Appendix I

Appendix II

Appendix III

Footnotes

Notes

Glossary

About the Author

The FLASHMAN Papers: In chronological order

The FLASHMAN Papers: In order of publication

Also by George MacDonald Fraser

About the Publisher

EXPLANATORY NOTE

It is now twenty years since the Flashman Papers, the memoirs of the notorious Rugby School bully who became a Victorian hero, were found in a Leicestershire saleroom. Of the dozen or so packets of manuscript, seven have so far been published in book form; they have covered four military campaigns (the First Afghan War, Crimea, Indian Mutiny, and Sioux War of 1879), and five episodes of less formal and generally reluctant active service – pirate-hunting with Brooke of Sarawak; as military adviser to Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar; as conspirator with Bismarck in the Schleswig-Holstein affair; in the African slave trade and Underground Railroad; and on the American frontier during the Gold Rush. This eighth volume sees him returning to military service in the Taiping Rebellion and Pekin Expedition of 1860.

Not the least interesting feature of Flashman’s recollections, to students of history, is the light they cast on the early years of many famous Victorians, who are seen through the unsparing eyes of one who, while a self-confessed coward, libertine, and scoundrel, was nevertheless a scrupulous reporter. Thus, we have seen him fleeing the murderous wrath of the young politician Bismarck, viewing Congressman Lincoln with wary respect, teaching the infant Crazy Horse how to wink, admiring Lola Montez the aspiring novelty dancer, and toadying to the young Queen Victoria herself. In China he encounters two of the great mercenary captains, a future empress, the founding fathers of the modern British Army and Navy, and those strange, forgotten peasants who changed the face of a great empire. It may be that he provides some new historical insights, while again demonstrating the lengths to which perfidy, impudence, immorality, and poltroonery may be stretched in the enforced pursuit of fame, riches, and above all, survival.

In accordance with the wishes of Mr Paget Morrison, owner of the Flashman manuscripts, I have confined my editing to correcting the old soldier’s spelling, checking the accuracy of the narrative (which is exact where matters of verifiable historical fact are concerned) and inserting the usual foot-notes, appendices, and glossary.

G.M.F.

Old Professor Flashy’s first law of economics is that the time to beware of a pretty woman is not when you’re flush of cash (well, you know what she’s after, and what’s a bankroll more or less?), but when you’re short of the scratch, and she offers to set you right. Because that ain’t natural, and God knows what she’s up to. I learned this when I was fourteen, and one Lady Geraldine, a high-spirited Hebe ten years my senior, lured me out in a punt with the promise of a crown if I minded her clothes while she went bathing. In all innocence, I accepted – and I haven’t seen that five bob yet, because the randy baggage had to shell out all her loose change to buy the silence of the grinning water-bailiff who caught us unawares in the reeds, where she was teaching me natural history after her swim. I had the presence of mind even at that tender age to clap my breeches over my face and so avoid recognition as I fled, but you take the point – I had been misled, in my youthful simplicity, by a designing female who played on my natural cupidity.

Ever since, when they’ve dangled rich rewards before me, I’ve taken fright. If the case of Mrs Phoebe Carpenter was an exception – well, she was a clergyman’s wife, and you don’t expect double-dealing from a wide-eyed simperer who sings come-to-Jesus in the choir. I don’t know why I bothered with her … yes, I do, though; shaped like an Indian nautch-dancer under her muslin, blue-eyed, golden-haired, and with that pouting lower lip that’s as good as a beckoning finger to chaps like me – she reminded me rather of my darling wife, whom I hadn’t seen in more than three years and was getting uncommon hungry for. So, reading the invitation in Mrs Carpenter’s demure smile, and having ten days to loaf in Hong Kong before my ship sailed for Home,¹ I decided to have a cast at her; it was a dead-and-alive hole in ’60, I can tell you, and how else should a weary soldier pass his time?

So I attended morning and evening service, hollering hosannas and nodding stern approval while her drone of a husband sermonised about temptation and the snares that Satan spreads (about which he didn’t know the first dam’ thing), and gallantly helping her to gather up the hymn-books afterwards. I dined with them, traded a text or two with the Reverend, joined them in evening prayers, squired her along the Queen’s Road – she was all for it, of course, but what was middling rum was that he was, too; it ain’t every middle-aged vicar who cares to see his young bride escorted by a dashing Lancer with Balaclava whiskers. I put it down to natural toad-eating on his part, for I was the lion of the hour in those days, with my new knighthood and V.C., and all my Mutiny heroics to add to the fame I had undeservedly won in Crimea and Afghanistan. If you’ve read my earlier memoirs you’ll know all about it – and how by shirking, running, diving into cover, and shielding my quaking carcase behind better men, I had emerged after four campaigns with tremendous credit, a tidy sum in loot, and a chestful of tinware. I was a colonel of six years’ seniority at 37, big, bluff, handsome Flash Harry, quite a favourite with Queen and Consort, well spoken of by Palmerston and my chiefs, married to the beauteous and wealthy daughter of a peer (and a dead peer, at that) – and only I knew (though I’d a feeling that wily old Colin Campbell suspected) that my fame was all a fraud and a sham.

There had been a time when I was sure it couldn’t last, and they were bound to find me out for the poltroom and scoundrel I was – but I’d been devilish lucky, and, d’ye know, there’s nothing sticks like a good name, provided you know how to carry your credit with a modest grin and a glad eye. Once let ’em call you a hero, and they’ll never leave off worshipping – which is absolute nuts when the worshipper cuts a figure like the adoring Mrs Carpenter’s. After three days of my society I reckoned she was ready to melt; all that was needed was a stroll in the garden after dark, a few well-chosen quotations from the Song of Solomon, and she’d play like one of those abandoned Old Testament queens her husband was forever reviling from the pulpit.

As a final rehearsal I took her out to picnic at the Poke Fullam bungalow, which was the favoured resort in Hong Kong at that time; we found a secluded spot, spread a rug, disposed of the cold prawns and a bottle of Hock, and settled down to exchange my murmured gallantries for her sighs and coy glances – I didn’t intend to board her that afternoon, you understand; too public, and she wasn’t even part-drunk. As it happened, I’d have been wasting my time, for the innocent Mrs Carpenter had been working to a fixed end just as purposefully as I. And such an end; when I think back on it, words fail me.

She led up to it by talking of her husband’s ambition to build a church and hall over at Kowloong; even in those days it was the fashionable place, so he would be quite top dog among the local gospel-wallopers. The difficulty, says she sighing, was money – although even that would not have been insurmountable had it not been for the impending war.

‘When Sir Hope Grant begins his campaign, you see, it is certain that there will be a cessation of all China trade, even with Canton,’ says she. ‘And when that happens – why, there will be an end to all Josiah’s hopes. And mine.’ And she choked back what sounded like a little sob.

I’d been paying no heed, content to stroke her hand, brotherly-like, while she prattled, but hearing her gulp I perked up. Get ’em weeping, and you’re half way to climbing all over them. I feigned concern, and squeezed her hand, begging her to explain what Grant’s campaign could have to do with dear Josiah’s church-building. I knew, as all the world did, that Grant was due in Hong Kong shortly with a fleet and army whose purpose would be to go up-country and force our latest treaty down the Chinese Emperor’s throat, but it wasn’t liable to be much of a war: show the flag to the Chinks, kick a few yellow backsides, and home again with hardly a shot fired – the kind of campaign that would have suited me, if I’d been looking for one, which I wasn’t. I could thank God I’d be homeward bound before Grant arrived, for he knew me from India and would certainly dragoon me into service if I were silly enough to be on hand. You don’t pass up the chance of employing the gallant Flashy. And he don’t pass up the chance of making himself scarce.

‘But even a little war will put an end to traffic with the Chinese merchants,’ she lamented. ‘Oh, it is so hard, when Josiah and his friends have invested so wisely! To be robbed of the deserved profit that would have fulfilled his dream! It is too bad!’ And she looked at me with trembling mouth and great blue eyes – Gad, she was like Elspeth, even to the imbecile parting of those crimson lips, and the quivering of her top hamper. Feeling slightly fogged, I asked, what investment had dear Josiah made?

‘Why, opium, of course! He was so clever, laying out Papa’s legacy in two thousand chests of the very choicest Patna,’ says this fair flower of the vicarage. ‘And it would have fetched ever so much money at Canton – more than enough to build our dear little church! But if war comes, and he cannot sell his cargo …’ She sniffed and looked woebegone.

‘D’you mean to tell me,’ says I, astonished, ‘that Josiah is smuggling poppy?’ I know the Church is game for anything, as a rule, and Hong Kong only existed for the opium trade; most everyone was in it. But it don’t go with dog-collars and Sunday schools, exactly.

‘Gracious, no! Dear Sir Harry, how could you suppose such a thing? Why, it is not smuggling at all nowadays!’ She was all lovely earnestness as she explained – and so help me, these were her very words: ‘Josiah says that the fifth supplementary clause of the new treaty removes all restrictions on the trade in opium, cash, pulse, grain, saltpetre … oh, I forget all the things, but one of them is spelter, whatever that may be; it sounds very horrid. It is true,’ she admitted gravely, ‘that the treaty is not yet ratified, but Sir Hope Grant will see to that, and Josiah says there can be no illegality in profiting by anticipation.’ So there.

Josiah’ll end up in Lambeth Palace or Dartmoor, at this rate, thinks I. Imagine – a clergyman peddling the black smoke. Purely out of curiosity, I asked didn’t he have moral qualms? She twitched her tits in impatience.

‘Oh, Josiah says that is Nonconformist missionary talk, and that it is well-known the natives of China use opium as a sedative, rather than as a narcotic, and that it does not one-tenth of the harm that strong waters cause among our poorer classes at home. Gin, and such things.’ Then she sighed again, and they quivered in dejection. ‘But it is all by the way now. If he cannot sell the cargo … and he could have built our church and to spare, too!’

With enough over to start a couple of brothels, no doubt, the way Josiah did business. ‘Hold on,’ says I. ‘Why can’t he sell it – where is it, by the way?’

‘At Macao. Josiah is gone over today to see it put aboard the fast crabs and scrambling dragons.’ Not two years out of the schoolroom, sink me, and she was talking like a taipan.fn1

‘Well, there you are – he can send it up Pearl River to the Canton factories tomorrow, and sell it to the Hongs.’

‘Oh, if it were so simple! But you see, Sir Harry, with all the war talk there is word that the Chinese merchants have been forbidden to buy from our people … and … and Josiah and his friends have no influence to persuade them.’

‘Then get Dent or Jardine to run it in – they’ll persuade anybody – and get a better price than Josiah could, I daresay.’

‘And take all our profit in commission! They are the greediest persons, you know,’ says this tender child. ‘Besides, the price is settled. Josiah vows to take no less than eight pounds a chest.’

‘Jesus – I mean, dear me!’ says I. ‘Two thousand chests – why, that’s near a ton, isn’t it? Sixteen thousand quid!’ I was no expert, but you couldn’t be in Hong Kong five minutes without knowing the going figures. ‘Phew! Well, my dear, he’d better get it to Canton somehow before the war starts – stay, though: can’t he put it in bond until things are more settled?’

‘It is prepared chandoo, not raw cake,’ says the Opium Queen pathetically. ‘Unless it goes directly, it must spoil. Oh, is it not wretchedly unlucky? Those who could run it will do so only on extortionate terms; those who would, for a fair consideration, are not people who could deal with the Chinese officials and merchants. Josiah has a skipper, a Mr Ward, but he cannot speak Chinese, even!’

And it was then, with another superb sigh, that she turned those great misty eyes on me in undoubted appeal, and said in a little voice: ‘It would be so easy … for the right person, you see.’ She looked away, downcast. ‘Josiah says he would pay him ten per cent.’

Lady Geraldine had been rather more subtle … but she hadn’t been offering sixteen hundred quid. Handsome pocket money, if you like – and easier to earn than falling off a log, for whatever the Pekin government said, the Hong merchants would cut Confucius’s throat to buy a ton of chandoo, whoever offered it. And she was right – all that was needed was someone with bold front and bearing who could brush aside inconvenient officials on the run upriver, stick out his jaw at any Chink jack-in-the-office who threatened confiscation, and see that Josiah’s ignorant skipper found his way safe to Jackass Point. Nothing in that.

Mind you, she had a hard bark, asking a British Army colonel to nursemaid her shipload of puggle – yet why not? Here was I, friendly disposed, officer and gentleman, knew the ropes, spoke the lingo (well, I could understand a Mandarin, and make myself enough understood in turn; with the coolies I had to use pigeon and my boots), and just the chap to stare down any yellow office-wallahs. A week till my ship sailed, ample time … sixteen hundred … Mrs Carpenter swooning with gratitude … h’m …

You must remember that these thoughts ran through my mind with those innocent-wanton eyes fixed on mine, and that excellent bosom heaving between us. And if you think she was a froward piece, or that I should have smelled a battalion of rats … well, it was a plausible tale, and not even a scent of risk. With our garrison at Canton, the Pearl was as safe as the Avon, and there was no stigma – well, not to signify. It was ‘trade’, not ‘opium’, that would have raised an eyebrow at Horse Guards. And sixteen hundred … for a jolly sail on the river?

‘We … I … should be so grateful,’ she murmured, and gave me a quick slantendicular.

‘You little goose!’ says I indulgently, ‘if you want me to do it … why not say so?’ I gave her my sad Flashy smile. ‘Don’t you know I’d do anything for you?’ And with a light laugh I kissed her masterfully, munching away, and I daresay we might have done the business there and then if a gaggle of brats with a governess hadn’t hove in view, causing us to break clean and remark on the splendid view, such a perfect day for picnicking.

We settled the details in the tonga back to town, myself making light of it and pinching her palm, she all flushed confusion and breathless gratitude. How could she and dear Josiah ever thank me? Well, Josiah could stump up the rhino on my return, and she would certainly do the rest, if I could judge by the light in her eye and the way she shivered when I squeezed her knee. They’re all alike, you know.

Aye. I should have remembered Lady Geraldine.

I don’t know who ran the first chest of opium into China, but he was a great man in his way. It was as though some imaginary trader had put into the Forth with a cargo of Glenlivet to discover that the Scots had never heard of whisky. There was a natural appetite, as you may say. And while the Chinks had been puffing themselves half-witted long before the first foreign trader put his nose into the Pearl River, there’s no doubt that our own John Company had developed their taste for the drug, back in the earlies, and before long they couldn’t get enough of it.

This didn’t suit the ruling Manchoos, for while they were as partial to a pipe as the next heathen, they saw that it was ruining the commonalty, and who would hew the wood and draw the water then? These Manchoos, you see, were fierce warriors who had swept in from the north centuries earlier, and dealt with China much as our English forebears did with Ireland (not that we ever forced the Paddies to wear pigtails as a badge of serfdom). They established a Manchoo ruling class, took all the plum posts, ran the country with a sloth, inefficiency, and waste that would have shocked a Bengali babu, treated the conquered Chinese like dirt – and sat back in complacent luxury, growing their fingernails long, cultivating the more rarefied arts, galloping their concubines, developing a taste for putrefied food, preaching pure philosophy and practising abominable cruelties, exalting the trivial and neglecting the essential, having another romp at the concubines, and generally priding themselves on being lords of creation. Which, since they hardly admitted the existence of the world outside China, is what they were.

So you can see they resented white interlopers who bade fair to undermine their Empire with poppy drug, and did their damnedest to stop the trade, but couldn’t. To their chagrin they discovered that their God-given superiority, their highly refined taste in eggshell pottery, and their limitless lines of ancestors, availed nothing against any Dundee pirate with a pistol on his hip and a six-pounder in his bows who was determined to run his opium in. Which made the Manchoo Mandarins wild with outraged pride, and more high-handed towards foreigners than ever, with the result that war broke out in 1840. Being Chinese and useless, they lost, and had to cede Hong Kong to us and open up Treaty Ports to European trade. And the poppy-running went on as before, only more so.

You’d have thought that would teach ’em manners, but not a bit of it. Instead of realising that foreign trade had come to stay, they convinced themselves that we were only there on sufferance, and they could treat our traders and emissaries as dirt, evil-smelling foreign savages that we were. They knew China was the centre and master of the world, and that everyone else was barbarian filth, lurking on their outskirts plotting mischief, and needing to be brought to heel like untrained curs. What, admit us as equals? Trade freely with us? Receive our ambassadors at Pekin? (The Chinese for ‘ambassador’ is ‘tribute-bearer’, which gives you some notion of their conceit.) It was unthinkable.

You have to understand this Chinese pride – they truly believe they have dominion over us, and that our rulers are mere slaves to their Emperor. Haven’t I heard a red-button Mandarin, a greasy old profligate so damned cultivated that his concubines had to feed him and even carry him to the commode to do his business, because he’d never learned how – haven’t I heard him lisping about ‘the barbarian vassal Victoria’? As for the American President – a mere coolie. (And you won’t teach John Chinaman different by blowing his cities apart with artillery, or trampling his country underfoot. Well, if a footpad knocks you down, or a cannibal eats you, it don’t follow that he’s your superior, does it? Fiercer and stronger, perhaps, but infinitely lower in the scale of creation. That’s how the Chinese think of us – and damn the facts that stare ’em in the face.)

So, even after we’d licked them, and gained a trade foot-hold in the Treaty Ports, they continued as arrogant as ever, and finally over-stepped the mark in ’56, boarding the British ship Arrow (though whether she was entitled to fly the Union Flag was debatable) and arresting her Chink crew because one of ’em was believed to be a pirate (which some said he wasn’t, but one of his relatives might be). The usual Chinese confusion, you see, and before you could say ‘Snooks!’ we had bombarded Canton, and the local Mandarin was offering thirty dollars for British heads.

I believe it might have blown over if the clown Cobden, abetted by Gladstone and D’Israeli (there’s an unholy alliance, if you like), hadn’t worked himself into a sweat in Parliament, saying it was all our fault, and it was a scandal the way our opium-traffickers abused the Chinese, who were the most saintly folk on record, while British bounce and arrogance were a byword, and we were just picking a quarrel, more shame to us. This had Palmerston spitting his false teeth all over the shop; he damned Cobden and the Chinks for rascals both, said our honour had been flouted, and anyway we had only bombarded Canton with the ‘utmost forbearance’ (good old Pam!), and was Cobden aware that the Manchoos had beheaded 70,000 folk at Canton in the past year, and were guilty of vices that were a disgrace to human nature, hey?

Fine Parliamentary stuff, you see, and when Pam lost the vote and had to go to the country, he won a thumping majority (which was what the old scoundrel had been playing for all along) and the Chinese war was on with a vengeance. It was a scrappy business, but after we took Canton the Chinks had to climb down and agree to a new treaty, admitting us to inland trade, with Ambassadors at Pekin. But being still as arrogant as ever, they dragged their heels about signing, and when we sent a fleet up the Peiho to persuade ’em, damned if they didn’t have a sudden burst of martial valour, and handed us a splendid licking at the Taku Forts. So now, in the spring of ’60, with an uneasy truce between Britain and China, Hope Grant was coming with an army of British and Frogs, to convoy our Ambassador to Pekin, and make the Emperor sign.²

You must bear with my historical lecture, for I have to show you how things stood if you are to understand my tale. For all the official coolness between Pekin and ourselves, commerce was still going on between our traders and Canton (which we continued to hold) but the Carpenters were right to wonder how long it might continue, with our invasion imminent. Which brings me back to the point where I agreed to escort their cargo of poppy up the Pearl, with the prospect of a jolly river cruise, sixteen hundred sovs, and a fine frolic with dear Phoebe when I got back to Hong Kong.

Mind you, as I leaned on the rail of the lead lorcha bearing up beyond Lintin Island two days after our picnic, with the rising sun rolling the fog-banks up the great estuary, I could honestly say it wasn’t either the cash or the lady that had made me turn opium-runner. No, it was the fun of the thing, the lure of sport-without-danger, the seeking for fresh sights and amusements, like this magnificent Pearl River, with that wondrous silver mist that I suppose gave it its name, and its fairy islets beyond the Tiger’s Gate, and the dawn breeze rippling the shining water and filling the sails of the stubby junks and lorchas and crazy fisher-craft – and the pug-nosed, grinning Hong Kong boat girl rolling her poonts on the thwart of a sampan and shouting: ‘Hi-ya, cap’n! Hi-ya! You wanchee jiggee no wanchee jiggee? You payee two hunner’ cash, drinkee samshu? Jollee-jollee!’

‘Who you, Dragon Empress?’ says I. ‘Come aboard, one hunner’ cash, maybe all-same samshu.’ They’re the jolliest wenches, the Hong Kong boaters, plump little sluts who swim like fish and couple like stoats. She squealed with laughter and plunged in, reached the lorcha in a few fast strokes, and was hauled inboard, all wet and shiny and giggling in her little loin-cloth. Anything less like an angel of Providence you never saw, but that’s what she was; if I’d guessed, I’d ha’ treated her with more respect than I did, slapping her rump and sending her aft for later. For the moment I was content to muse at the rail, enjoying the warm sunshine and the distant green prospect of Lintin, where the coolies could be seen languidly pursuing the only two occupations known to the Chinese peasant: to wit, standing stock-still up to the knees in paddy-water holding a bullock on a rope, or shifting mud very slowly from one point to another. Deny them these employments, and they would simply lie down and die, which a good many of them seemed to do anyway. I’m told that Napoleon once said that China was a sleeping giant, and when she awoke the world would be sorry. He didn’t say who was going to get the bastards out of bed.

I put this to Ward, the skipper commanding the two lorchas which made up our little convoy. He was a brisk, wiry, bright-eyed little Yankee about ten years my junior, and though he hadn’t been in China more than a month or two, you couldn’t have wished for a smarter hand at the helm of a lorcha, or a sharper tongue when it came to keeping the Chinese boatmen up to the mark; he was a young terrier, and had learned his trade on American merchantmen, with a mate’s ticket, damn-your-eyes, which was fair going at his age. For all that, he had an odd, soft streak; when one of the Chinks was knocked overside by a swinging boom, and we lost way fishing him out, I looked to see Ward lay into him with a rope’s end for his clumsiness, or hang him from the rail to dry. But he just laughed and cuffed the Chink’s head, with a stream of pigeon, and says to me:

‘I fell overboard on my first voyage – and what d’ye think I was doing? Chasing a butterfly, so help me, I was! Say, I was a lot greener than that Chink, though! C’mon, ye blushing Chinese cherubs, tailee on makee pull! Pullee, I say! Tell ye what, colonel, it takes an awful lot o’ these beggars to do one man’s work!’

That was when I observed that the Chinese were the idlest rascals in creation, and he frowned and chuckled all together.

‘I reckon,’ says he. ‘But they could be a fine people, for all that. Give ’em someone to lead ’em, to drive ’em, to show ’em how. They got the prime country in creation here – when they find out how to use it. Say, and they’re smart – you know they were civilised while we were still running around with paint on? Why, they had paper an’ gunpowder centuries before we did!’

‘Which they use to make kites and fireworks,’ says I. It was plain he was an old China hand in the making – and after a few weeks’ acquaintance, too. ‘As for their civilisation, it’s getting rottener and more corrupt and decadent by the minute. Look at their ramshackle government—’

‘Look at the Taipings, if you like!’ cries he. ‘That’s the new China, mark my words! They’ll stand this whole country on its head, ’fore they’re through, see if they don’t!’ He took a big breath, smoothing his long black hair with both hands in an odd nervous gesture; his eyes were shining with excitement. ‘The new China! Boy, I’m going to get me a section of that, though! Know what, colonel? – after this trip, I might just take myself a long slant up the Yangtse and join up with ’em. Tai’ping tieng-kwow, eh? The Kingdom of Heavenly Peace – but can’t they fight some? I guess so – and you may be sure they’re on the look-out for mercenaries – why, a go-ahead white man could go right to the top among ’em, maybe make Prince even, with a button on his hat!’ He laughed and slapped his fist, full of ginger.

‘You’re crazy,’ says I, ‘but since they are too, you’ll fit right in, I daresay.’

‘Fred T. Ward fits in anywhere, mister!’ cries he, and then he was away along the deck again, chivvying the boatmen to trim the great mainsail, yelling his bastard pigeon and laughing as he tailed on to the rope.

Not only China-struck, but a well-fledged lunatic, I could see. Of course he wasn’t alone in having a bee in his bonnet about the Taipings; even the European Powers were keeping an anxious eye on them, wondering how far they might go. In case you haven’t heard of them, I must tell you that they were another of those incredible phenomena that made China the topsy-turvy mess it was, like some fantastic land from Gulliver, where everything was upside down and out of kilter. Talk about moonbeams from cucumbers; the Taipings were even dafter than that.

They began back in the ’forties, when a Cantonese clerk failed his examinations and fell into a trance, from which he emerged proclaiming that he was Christ’s younger brother – a ploy which, I’m thankful to say, I never tried on old Arnold after making a hash of my Greek construes at Rugby. Anyway, this clerk decided he had a God-given mission to overthrow the Manchoos and establish ‘the Tai’ping’ – the Kingdom of Eternal Peace or Heavenly Harmony or what you will. He went about preaching a sort of bastard Christianity which he’d picked up from missionary tracts, and in any normal country he’d either have been knocked on the head or given a University Chair. But this being China, his crusade had caught on, against all sense and reason, and within a few years he’d built up an enormous army, devastated several provinces, thrashed various Imperial generals, captured dozens of cities including the old capital, Nanking, and come within an ace of Pekin itself. Getting madder by the minute, mark you, but among the millions of peasants who’d rallied to him and swallowed his religious moonshine, there were some likely lads who plotted the campaigns, fought the battles, and imposed his amazing notions of worship and discipline on a sizeable slice of the population.

This was the famous Taiping Rebellion,fn2 the bloodiest war ever fought on earth, and it was still going great guns in ’60. Countless millions had already died in it, but neither the Imperials nor the rebels looked like winning just yet; the Imps were besieging Nanking, but not making much of it, while various Taiping armies were rampaging elsewhere, spreading the gospel and piling up the corpses, as not infrequently happens.

There was some sympathy for the Taipings among those Europeans (missionaries mostly) who mistakenly thought they were real Christians, and a few enthusiasts, as well as rascals and booty-hunters, had enlisted with them. Meanwhile our government, and the other foreign states who had some trade interest in China (and hoped to have a lot more) were watching uneasily, afraid to intervene, but devilish concerned about the outcome.

So there you are: a Manchoo government with an idiot Emperor who thought the world was square, fighting a lethargic war against rebels led by a lunatic, and preparing to resist a Franco-British invasion which wasn’t to be a war, exactly, but rather a great armed procession to escort our Ambassador to Pekin and persuade the Chinks to keep their treaty obligations – which included legalising the opium traffic at that moment personified by H. Flashman and his band of yellow brothers.³ And in case you think I was incautious, heading upriver at such a time, take a squint at the map, and be aware that all the bloodshed and beastliness was a long way from Canton; you’d not have caught me near the place otherwise.

We were into the Bocca Tigris, where the estuary narrows to a broad river among islands, before I started to earn my corn. Out from Chuenpee Fort comes an Imperial patrol boat with some minor official riff-raff aboard, hollering to us to heave to; Ward cocked an eye at me, but I shook my head, and we swept past them without so much as ‘good day’; they clamoured in our wake for a while, beating gongs and waving wildly, but gave up when they saw we’d no intention of stopping. Ward, who’d been anxiously scanning the big forts on the high bluffs overlooking the channel, shook his head with relief and grinned at me.

‘Is it always so easy?’ cries he, and I told him, not quite, we’d meet more determined inquiry farther on, but I would talk our way past. Sure enough, in late afternoon, when we were clearing Tiger Island, up popped a splendid galley, all gold and scarlet, with dragon banners and long ribbons fluttering from her upper works, her twenty oars going like clockwork as she steered to intercept us. She had three or four jingalsfn3 in her bows, and fifty men on her deck if there was one; under a little canopy on her poop there was a Mandarin in full fig of button-hat and silk robe, seated in state – and flying a kite, with a little lad to help him with the string. Even the most elderly and dignified Chinese delight in kites, you know, and no city park is complete without a score of sober old buffers pottering about like contented Buddhas with their airy toys fluttering and swooping overhead. This was a fine bird-kite, a great silver stork so lifelike you expected it to spread its wings as it hovered hundreds of feet above us.

To complete this idyllic scene, the galley carried on its bows a huge wooden cage, crammed with about twenty wretched coolies so close-packed they could hardly stir – criminals being carried to their place of punishment, probably. Their wailing carried across the water as the galley feathered her oars and an officer bawled across, demanding our business.

‘Ruth and Naomi, lorchas from Hong Kong, carrying opium to the factories,’ shouts I in my best Mandarin, and he said he must come aboard and examine us. I told Ward to keep way on the lorchas, and on no account to heave to. ‘If those thieving bastards once get on our deck, they’ll have the stoppings out of our teeth,’ I told him. ‘But if we keep going, there’s nothing they can do about it.’

‘Suppose they fire on us?’ says he, eyeing the jingals.

‘And start another war?’ I nodded at the Union Jack at our stern, and hollered across the water:

‘Our licence is in order, your excellency, and we are in great haste, and must proceed to Canton without delay. So you can bugger off, see?’

This provoked a great screaming of instructions to heave to immediately, but no one moved to the jingals, so I jumped on the rail and pointed to our flag.

‘This is a British vessel, and I am a close friend of Pahsia-li, who’ll have your yellow hide if you get gay with us, d’ye hear?’ In fact, I’d never met Harry Parkes, who was our man at Canton – and pretty well lord and master of the place – but I guessed the mention of his name might cause ’em to think. ‘Sheer off, damn you, or we’ll have half the oars out of you!’ She was gliding in to head us off, not thirty feet away, and in a moment her oars would be crumpled against our hull; it was a question of who gave way. Suddenly she veered on to a parallel course, with the officer shrieking to us to heave to; I made a rude gesture, and he ran to the Mandarin for instructions.

I was half-expecting what came next. There was a barked order, and a dozen of the galley’s crew ran forward and seized on the wooden cage in which the criminals were packed like so many herring. On the order they heaved, sliding the cage until it was poised on the lip of the bow platform; her oars took the water again, keeping her level with us – and then they just looked across at us, and the officer repeated his demand to us to heave to. I turned away and told Ward to keep her going. He was gaping, white-faced; the poor devils in the cage were squealing like things demented and struggling helplessly.

‘My God!’ cries he. ‘Are they going to drown them?’

‘Undoubtedly,’ says I. ‘Unless we heave to and allow ourselves to be boarded and plundered on some trumped-up excuse. In which case they’ll certainly drown ’em later, just the same. But they’re hoping we don’t know that – and that being soft-hearted foreign devils we’ll spill our wind and come to. It’s a special kind of Chinese blackmail, you see. So just hold your course and pay ’em no heed.’

He gulped, once, but he was a cool hand; he turned his back as I had done, and yelled to the helmsman to hold her steady. There was dead silence on our deck; only the creaking of the timbers and the swish of water along our side. Another yell to heave to from the galley … silence … a shrieked order … an awful, heart-rending chorus of wails and screams, and an almighty splash.

‘Fine people, with a prime country, as you were saying,’ says I, and strolled over to the rail again. The galley was still abreast, but in her wake there was a great bubbling and boiling to mark where the cage was sinking to the bottom of the Pearl. Ward came up beside me; his teeth were gritted and there was great beads of sweat on his brow.

‘Old China or New China,’ says I, ‘it’s all the same, young Fred.’

‘The goddam swine!’ cries he. ‘The cold-blooded yellow bastard – look at him there, with his goddam kite! He hasn’t even moved a muscle!’ His face was working with rage. ‘Goddam him! Goddam him to hell!’

‘Amen,’ says I, and watched the galley slowly falling astern before turning back towards the shore, the silver stork-kite hanging in the air far above her. Suddenly a brightly coloured object went whirling up the string, and then another – gaily-painted paper butterflies which were brought to a sudden halt by a twitch on the kite-string, so that they fluttered in the breeze, glinting and turning, just below the stork.

‘Would you have heaved to when they made to drown those poor beggars, Fred?’ I asked.

He hesitated. ‘I guess,’ says he, and looked at me. ‘That’s why you’re aboard, huh?’

I nodded. ‘You see, they daren’t offer us violence – not after the Arrow affair. And they’ve no real right to stop an opium boat – but they’ll use every trick they know to bluff you, and once they’re aboard, and you don’t speak Chinese, and they outnumber you ten to one – well, they can sort of confiscate your cargo – oh, and release it later, no doubt, with apologies … and lo and behold, your chests of first-rate chandoo have been replaced, hey presto! by a ton of opium dross. See?’

‘Bastards!’ was all he said. ‘Him an’ his goddam kite!’

‘Speaking of which – see those butterflies? Somewhere up near the Second Bar an active little Chink with a spy-glass is taking note of ’em – which means that round about the Six Flats we’ll meet another deputation, with a much more important Mandarin on board. It may be politic to present him with a couple of chests, rather than risk any embarrassment.’

‘How’s that?’ His voice was sharp. ‘Give him some of our opium?’

‘What’s sixteen quid out of sixteen thousand?’ I wondered.

He was silent for a moment. ‘I guess,’ says he, and then: ‘Six Flats is up beyond the First Bar, isn’t it?’

I said it was, and that we ought to be there tomorrow noon, and after a little more talk he said he’d better take post on the second lorcha for the night, as we had agreed, so that both vessels were under proper control.

‘Remember – keep close up, and don’t stop for anything,’ says I, and he swore he wouldn’t. He didn’t bother with a small boat, but just dropped over the side and trod water until the second lorcha came by, and he scrambled aboard. A good boy that, thinks I; green, but steady. By Gad, I didn’t know the half of him, did I?

The boatmen were cooking their evening meal forward, but I’d brought cold fowl and beef, and after a capital meal and a bottle of Moselle while the sun went down I was in splendid trim for my Hong Kong girl, who was sitting by the stern-rail, singing high-pitched and combing her long hair. We went down to the tiny cabin, and were buckled to in no time; a fine, fat little romp she was, too, taking a great pleasure in her work and giggling and squealing as we thrashed about, but no great practitioner of the gentle art. But you don’t expect Montez or Lily Langtry for sixpence, which was what I was paying her; she was a crude, healthy animal, and when I’d played myself out with her she retired with a flask of the promised samshu and I settled down to my well-earned repose.

She was back at first light, though, crawling in beside me and grunting as she rubbed her boobies across my face, which is better than an alarm clock any day. I laid hold, and was preparing to set about her when I realised that she was trembling violently, and the pretty pug face was working with a strange, ugly tic.

‘What the devil’s the matter?’ says I, still half-asleep, and she twitched and sniffed at me.

‘Wantee piecee pipe!’ says she, whimpering. ‘Mass’ gimme! Piecee pipe!’

‘Oh, lord!’ says I. ‘Get one from the boatmen, can’t you?’ She wanted her opium, and I could see she’d be no fun until she’d had it. But the boatmen hadn’t any, or wouldn’t give it, apparently, and she began to blubber and twitch worse than ever, sobbing ‘Piecee pipe!’ and pulling the pipe from her loin-cloth and shoving it at me. I slapped her across the cabin, and she lay there crying and shivering; I’d have let her lie, but her first awakening of me had put me in the mood for a gallop, and it occurred to me that with a few puffs of black smoke inside her she might be stimulated to a more interesting performance than she’d given the previous night. It was only a step under the companion to where half a ton of the best chandoo was to be had; Josiah would never grudge a skewerful in such a good cause, I was sure.

So I growled at her to get her lamp going and bring her pin, and she came panting as I pushed through the chick-screen to the long main hold which ran the full length of the lorcha under its flush deck. There were the chests, and while she twitched and whined at my elbow I rummaged for a handspike and stuck it under the nearest lid. She had her little lamp lit, and was holding out the skewer in a trembling paw – as I said before, she was a most unlikely-looking guardian angel.

I levered the lid up with a splintering of cheap timber, and pulled back the corner of the oilskin cover beneath. And then, as I recall, I said ‘Holy God!’ and came all over thoughtful as I contemplated the contents of the chest. For if I hadn’t had Mrs Phoebe Carpenter’s word for it that those contents were high-grade prepared Patna opium, I’d have sworn that they were Sharps carbines. All neatly packed in grease, too.

There was a time, in my callow youth, when the discovery that I was running not opium but guns would have had me bolting frantically for the nearest patch of timber, protesting that it was nothing to do with me, constable, and the chap in charge would be along in a moment. For opium, into China, was a commonplace if not entirely respectable commodity, whereas firearms, into anywhere, are usually highly contraband, and smuggling ’em is as often as not a capital offence. But if twenty years of highly active service had taught me anything, it was that there is a time to flee in blind panic, and a time to stand fast and think. Given the leisure, I daresay I’d have replaced that chest lid, slapped the slut who was staring wildly at me, and taken a turn on deck to reflect, thus:

Had Mrs Carpenter spun me a web of yarn, and were she and dear Josiah aware that their cargo consisted of the very latest repeating weapons? Undoubtedly; Josiah had supervised the loading of the chests, and what he knew his wife knew, too. Very good, to whom should a God-fearing British clergyman and his wife be smuggling guns in China? Not to any British recipient, and certainly not to the Manchoo Imperials – which left the Taiping rebels. Utterly incredible – until one reflected that there were Taiping enthusiasts among our people, and none warmer than those clergy who believed that the ‘long-haired devils’ were devout Christians fighting the good fight against the Imperial heathen. Were Carpenter and his wife sufficiently demented for that? Presumably; if you’re religious you can believe anything. Well, then, if they wanted to supply Sharps carbines to the Taipings, why not ship ’em up the Yangtse to Nanking, where the Taipings were in force, instead of to Canton, where there wasn’t a Taiping within a hundred miles? Simple: Nanking was under siege, the Yangtse was a damned dangerous river, and they’d have had to run the stuff through Shanghai, where there’d have been a far greater risk of detection.

But, dammit, how could they hope to smuggle guns into Canton, where our garrison and gunboats were thick as fleas, and the chests would have to be opened at the factories? That was plainly impossible – so they didn’t intend the lorchas ever to reach Canton. No, if their skipper turned eastward into the web of tributaries and creeks short of the First Bar, to some predetermined rendezvous … a Taiping mule-train waiting on a deserted river-bank … off-load and away up-country … why, it could be done as safe as sleep. And poor old Flashy; whom they’d needed to keep meddling and acquisitive Chinese officials at bay during the run past the forts, and who had performed that service to admiration – why, he’d be no trouble. Could he, Her Majesty’s loyal servant, go running to Parkes at Canton to confess that he’d been instrumental in providing the Taipings with enough small arms to keep ’em going until doomsday? Not half.

And that little snake Ward must be up to the neck in it! Hadn’t he announced himself a Taiping-worshipper only yesterday? Wait, though – he’d also admitted that he would have hove to for the Imperial galley, which would have been fatal to him … By gum, had that been acting for my benefit? Yes, because later when I’d remarked that we might have to part with a chest or two as ‘squeeze’ to the Mandarins, he’d been taken suddenly aback, until he’d reflected that the lorchas would never get that close to Canton. The lying, dissimulating, Yankee snake …

That, I say, is how I would have reasoned, given the leisure – and I’d have been dead right, too. As it was, no leisure was afforded me; some of it went through my mind in a flash – the bit about Ward, for instance – but I hadn’t had time to slam the chest cover down when I felt the lorcha swing violently off course, her mainsail cracked like a cannon, there was a yelling and scampering of bare feet overhead, and I had flung the wench aside, dived into the cabin, grabbed my Adams from beneath my pillow, and was up the companion like a jack rabbit.

I emerged just in time to duck beneath the mainsail boom as it came swinging ponderously overhead with a couple of boatmen clinging on, yelling bloody murder as they tried to secure it. The others were at the rail, pigtails flapping and chattering like monkeys, staring forward. By God, the second lorcha was now ahead, and there was Ward at her helm; we were close in by the east bank – it must be the east, for there was the sun gleaming dully through the morning mist, the first rays turning the waters to gold around us. But we were running south! My lorcha was just completing her turn; I spun round in bewilderment. Two of the boatmen had the tiller jammed over as far as it would go – and a furlong behind us, its oars going like the Cambridge crew as it raced down towards us, was a dandy little launch rowed by fellows in white shirts and straw hats, with a little chap in the sternsheets egging them on. And half a mile beyond that, emerging from a creek on the east bank, was an undoubted Navy sloop. She was flying the Union Jack.

There are times, as I said, to run, and times to think – and by God I couldn’t do either! I know now that Ward, a stranger to the Pearl, and with only a clown of a boatman as pilot, had missed his turning in the dark, and run slap into one of our Canton patrollers, but in that moment I was aware only that the blue-jackets were upon us, and poor old Flash was sitting on top of the damnedest load of contraband you ever saw. I acted on blind instinct, thank heaven; the launch was closing in, and there was only one thing for it.

‘Ward, you toad!’ I bellowed. ‘Take that!’ And springing on to the rail to get a clear shot at him, I let blaze with the Adams. He sprang away from the tiller of the other lorcha, and I loosed off another shot which struck splinters from his rail; his boat yawed crazily, and in the crisis he behaved with admirable presence of mind: he was over her rail like a porpoise, taking the water clean and striking out like billy-o for the bank, not a hundred yards off. I jumped down, roaring, and was about to send another ball after him when one of my helmsmen whipped out his kampilan and came at me, screaming like a banshee. I shot him point-blank, and the force of it flung him back against the rail, clutching his guts and pouring blood. Before his fellows could move I had my back to the rail, flourishing the Adams, and bawling to them to stand off or I’d blow ’em to blazes. For an instant they hesitated, hands on hilts, the ugly yellow faces contorted with rage and fear; I banged a shot over their heads, and the whole half-dozen scampered across beside their wounded mate. Behind me I heard a young voice, shrill with excitement, yelling ‘In oars! Follow me!’, the launch was bumping against our side, and here was a young snotty, waving a cutlass as big as himself, and half a dozen tars at his heels, jumping on to our deck.

‘Come along, you fellows!’ cries I heartily. ‘You’re just in time! Careful, now … these are desperate villains!’ And I gave a final flourish of the Adams at the boatmen, who were crouched, half naked and looking as piratical as sin, beside their leaking comrade, before turning to greet the gaping midshipman.

‘Flashman, colonel, army intelligence,’ says I briskly, and held out my hand. He took it in bewilderment, goggling at me and at the boatmen. ‘Just have your lads watch out for those rascals, will you? They’re gun-runners, you know.’

‘My stars!’ says he, and then gave a little start. ‘Flashman, did you say – sir?’ He was a sturdy, snub-nosed young half-pint with a bulldog chin, and he was staring at me with disbelief. ‘Not … I mean – Colonel Flashman?’

Well, I don’t suppose there was a soul in England – not in the Services, leastways – who hadn’t heard of the gallant Flashy, and no doubt he was recognising me from the illustrations he’d seen in the press. I grinned at him.

‘That’s right, youngster. Here, you’d best put some of your fellows aboard that other lorcha – why, blast it, the brute’s getting clear away!’ And I pointed over the rail to the near shore, where the figure of Ward was floundering ashore in the shallows. Even as we watched he disappeared into the tall reeds, and I sighed with inward relief. That was the star witness safely out of the way. I damned him and turned away, laughing ruefully, and the snotty came out of his trance like a good ’un.

‘Jenkins, Smith – cover those fellows! Bland – take the launch to that other lorcha and make her safe!’ The other lorcha, I was pleased to see, was floundering about with her crew at sixes and sevens. As his tars jumped to it, the snotty turned back to me. ‘I don’t understand, sir. Gun-runners, did you say?’

‘As ever was, my son. What’s your name?’

‘Fisher, sir,’ says he. ‘Jack Fisher, midshipman.’

‘Come along, Jackie,’ says I, clapping him on the shoulder like the cheery soul I was – no side, you see. ‘And I’ll show you the wickedness of the world.’

I took him below, and he gaped at the sight of the Hong Kong girl, who was crouched shivering and bare-titted. But he gaped even wider when I showed him the contents of the ‘opium’ chests.

‘My stars!’ says he again. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Guns for the Taiping rebels, my boy,’ says I grimly. ‘You arrived just in time, you see. Another half-hour and I’d have had to tackle these scoundrels single-handed. Your captain got my message, I suppose?’

‘I dunno, sir,’ says he, owl-eyed. ‘We saw your lorchas, turning tail, and I was sent to investigate. We’d no notion …’

So Ward’s guilty conscience had been his undoing – if he’d held his course the Navy would never have looked at him, and if they had, why, he was just carrying opium, and had the famous Flashy to vouch for him. For he wasn’t to know I’d sniffed out his real cargo. Gad, though, if that slut hadn’t begged for a pipe of chandoo, I’d have been in a pretty fix, with Ward panicking, the Navy’s suspicions aroused, and myself flat-footed when they came aboard and started rummaging. Thanks to her, I’d had those few minutes to plot my course.

‘Mr Fisher,’ says I, ‘I think it’s time I had a word with your skipper, what? Perhaps you’d be good enough to take me aboard?’

You see, of course, what I was about. It was the ploy I’d used on the slave-ship Balliol College in ’48, when the Yankee Navy caught us off Cape San Antonio, and to save my skin I’d welcomed our captors with open arms and let on that I’d only been with the slavers to spy on them.fn1 Then, I’d had Admiralty papers to prove my false identity, but here I had something infinitely better – my fame and reputation. For who, boarding a gun-runner and finding valiant old Flashy holding the miscreants at bay single-handed, would suspect that he was one of the gang? Heroes who have led the Light Brigade and braved the heathen hordes at Cawnpore and Kabul, are above suspicion; Master Fisher might well be fogged as to what I was doing there, exactly, but it never crossed his innocent young mind that I was anything but what I’d announced myself – an army officer apprehending villainous foreign smugglers. And since I was from intelligence, no doubt there was some splendid mystery behind it, and explanations would follow. Quite.

Nor did the prospect of explaining trouble me – much. After all, I was Flashy, and it was well-known officially that I’d been up to my ears in secret affairs in India and Central Asia, and here, they would think, was more of the same. Once I’d determined what tale to tell, it was simply a matter of carrying it off with modest assurance (trust me for that) and a pinch of mystery to make ’em feel confidential and cosy, and they’d swallow whatever I told ’em, nem. con. There wouldn’t be a soul to give me the lie, and some of it would be true, anyway. (I’m proud to say it never occurred to me to tell the real truth, with Mrs Carpenter, etc. They’d never have swallowed that – which is ironic. Anyway, it would have made me look an imbecile.)

So when I was aboard the sloop, and its young commander had listened to little Fisher’s report and my own terse embellishments, and whistled softly at the sight of the lorchas’ cargo, I was perfectly prepared for the inevitable question, asked with respectful bewilderment:

‘But … how came you to be aboard of them, sir?’

I looked him in the eye with just a touch of tight-lipped smile. ‘I think, commander,’ says I, ‘that I’d best report direct to Mr Parkes at Canton. Least said, what? You received no message from him about …?’ and I nodded at the lorchas. ‘Just so. Perhaps he was right. Well, I’ll be obliged if you’ll carry me to him as soon as may be. In the meantime,’ I permitted myself a wry grin, ‘take good care of these Chinese villains, won’t you? I’ve been after ’em too long to want to lose ’em now. Oh, and by the way – that boy Fisher shapes well.’⁴

He couldn’t get me to Canton fast enough; we were in the Whampoa Channel by noon, and two hours later dropped anchor off Jackass Point, opposite the old factories. Then there was a delay while the lorchas and their crews were taken in charge, and the commander went to make his report to his chief, and to Parkes – I didn’t mind, since it gave me time to polish the tale I was going to tell – and it wasn’t until the following morning that I was escorted through the English Garden to the office and residence of Harry Parkes, Esq., H.M. Commissioner at Canton and (bar Bruce at Shanghai) our chief man in China. From all I’d heard, he was formidable: he knew the country better than any foreigner living, they said, for though he wasn’t thirty he’d been out since childhood, served through the Opium Wars, been on cutting-out expeditions as a schoolboy, done all manner of secret work and diplomatic ruffianing since, and carried things with a high hand against the Chinese – whose language he spoke rather better than the Emperor.

He greeted (I won’t say welcomed) me with brisk formality, stiff and upright behind his official desk, not a hair out of place on the sleek dark head. Energy was in every line of him, from the sharp prominent nose to the firm capable hands setting his papers just so; he was all business at once, in a clear, hard voice – and suddenly, convincing him didn’t seem quite so easy.

‘This is a singular business, Sir Harry! What’s behind it?’

‘Not much,’ says I, hoping I was right. Clever and easy, I don’t mind – I’m that way myself – but clever and brusque unsettles me. I handed him the ‘requested and required’ note Palmerston had given me when I went to India – the usual secret passport, but pretty faded now. ‘You had no message from me?’

‘I did not know you were in China, until yesterday.’ He glanced up sharply from the passport. ‘This is more than three years old.’

‘When I left England. What I’ve been doing since will have to stay under the rose, I’m afraid—’

He gave a little barking laugh. ‘Not altogether, I fancy,’ says he, with what he probably imagined was a smile. ‘Your knighthood and Victoria Cross are hardly state secrets.’

‘I meant since then – this past year. It has nothing to do with this affair, anyway – that’s a tale that’s soon told.’ I breathed an inward prayer, meeting the steady grey eyes in that lean lawyer face. ‘I’m due home on the Princess Charlotte, sailing on the eleventh—’

‘In three days? Grant is due on the thirteenth. I beg your pardon, pray continue.’

‘Aye, well, two nights ago I was over in Macao, looking up an old chum from Borneo, when I was with Brooke.’ No harm in dropping in that glorious acquaintance, I thought. ‘I needn’t mention his name, it’s of no importance, but he’s a downy bird, Chinese, with an eye in every bush – an old White Lily Society man, you know the sort …’

‘His name might be valuable,’ says Parkes, and his hand went ever so casually to a vase of flowers on his desk; he lifted it with three fingers round the stem, and set it down again. Clever bastard.

‘Exactly,’ says I, and ran my thumb over three fingertips,⁵ just to show him. ‘Well, we talked shop, and by way of gossip he let fall that a shipment of arms was going upriver to the Taipings – Shih-ta-kai’s people, he thought. Which was nothing to me – until he mentioned that they were British bought-and-paid-for, though he didn’t know who. Not strictly my indaba, you may say, but it struck me that if it got about that British arms were going to the Long-Haired Devils, it might cause us some embarrassment with Pekin, you know?’

I looked for a nod, but he just sat there with his fingers laced on the blotter before him. I’d a feeling that if you’d fired a gun in his ear he wouldn’t have taken his eyes from mine.

‘So I thought I should have a look. Nothing official to be done on Portuguese territory, of course, but my friend knew where the lorchas were preparing to weigh – and there they were, sure enough, ostensibly loaded with opium, if you please. On the spur of the moment I approached the skipper—’

‘That would be Ward.’

It was like a kick in the throat. I couldn’t help staring, and had to improvise swiftly to explain my obvious astonishment.

‘Ward, you say? He told me his name was Foster.’ The sweat was cold on my spine. ‘You knew … about him, and the shipment?’

‘Only his name. My agents in Hong Kong and Macao send notice of all opium shipments, vessels, owners, and skippers.’ He lifted a list from his desk. ‘Lorchas Ruth and Naomi, owned by Yang Fang and Co., Shanghai, commander F. T. Ward. No suggestion, of course, that he carried anything but opium.’ He laid it down, and waited.

‘Well, on impulse, I asked him for a lift to Canton.’ By gum, he’d shaken me for a second, but if that was the extent of his knowledge I was still safe – but was it? This was a foxy one – and on instinct I did the riskiest thing a liar can do: I decided to change my story. I’d been about to tell him I’d stowed away, full of duty and holy zeal, and come thundering out at the critical moment, to prevent the rascals escaping when our sloop hove in sight. Suddenly I knew it wouldn’t do – not with this cold clam. I’ve been lying all my life, and I know: when in doubt, get as close to the truth as you can, and hang on like grim death.

‘I asked him for a lift to Canton – and if you ask what was in my mind, I can’t tell you. I knew it was my duty to stop those guns – and placed as I was, without authority in a foreign port, that meant staying with ’em, somehow, and taking whatever chance offered.’

‘You might,’ he interrupted, ‘have informed the Portuguese.’

‘I might, but I didn’t – and I doubt if you would, either.’ I gave him just a touch of the Colonel, there. ‘Anyway, he refused me, mighty curt. I offered passage money, but he wouldn’t budge – which settled it for me, for any honest trader would have agreed. I was going off, wondering what to do next, when he suddenly called me back, and asked did I know the river, and did I speak Chinese? I said I did, he chewed it over, and then offered to take me if I’d act as interpreter on the voyage. I had only a moment aside to tell my Chinese friend to get word to you, or Hong Kong, of what was forward. But you’ve had no word from him?’

‘None, Sir Harry,’ and not a flicker of expression – I could have brained the man. There’s nothing more discouraging than lying to a poker face, when what you need is gasps and whistles and cries of ‘I’ll be damned!’ and ‘What happened then?’ to whet your prevarications.

‘Aye, well, I can’t say I’m surprised. He’ll talk to a pal, but he’s leery of official circles, blast him. Well, we sailed, and what I needed, of course, was a squint at the cargo. But they never left me alone for a moment. Foster –’ I changed the name just in time ‘– and the Chinks were always on hand, so I must bide my time. I stayed awake the first night, but no chance offered; the second night, I’m afraid, I just caulked out.’ A shrug, and rueful Flashy smile, followed by an eager glint in the eye. ‘But then I had a splendid stroke of luck. Just before dawn, a native girl of the crew – a cook or some such thing, I suppose – woke me, begging for a pipe of opium! Would you believe it? There was no one about – and here was a heaven-sent chance to open a chest, with a ready explanation if I were detected. So I did – and there were the Sharps!’

God, it sounded lame – especially the true parts, which I thought was damned hard. I waited; if the man were human, he must say something. He did.

‘You must have formed some plan by this time – what did you hope to do, alone, against so many?’ He sounded impatient – and downright curious.

‘For the life of me, Mr Parkes, I wasn’t sure.’ I grinned him straight in the eye, bluff, honest Harry. ‘Tackle the crew with my revolver? Try to scuttle her? I don’t know, sir. By the grace of God the sloop hove in sight just then … and I did tackle ’em! And the rest you know.’

He sat for a moment, and I braced myself for the incredulous questions, the outright disbelief – and then he gave his sudden bark of a laugh, and struck the bell at his elbow.

‘Some coffee, Sir Harry? I’m sure you deserve it. That, sir,’ says he, shaking his head, ‘is the most damned unlikely tale I ever heard – and what I’d say to it if I didn’t know it for true, I cannot imagine! Well, it is unlikely, you’ll own?’ He chuckled again, and it seemed to me an indignant frown was in order, so I gave one, but it was wasted since he was talking to the bearer with the coffee-tray. Relief and bewilderment filled me; he’d swallowed it … he knew it was true …? What the deuce …?

‘Speaking in my official capacity, I have to say that your actions were entirely irregular,’ says he, handing me a cup, ‘and might have had serious results – for yourself. You risked your life, you know – and your honour.’ He looked hard at me. ‘A senior officer, found aboard an arms-smuggler, without authority? Even with your distinguished name … well …’ He stirred his own cup, and then smiled – and, d’ye know, I realised he was just twenty-nine, and not the fifty-odd he’d sounded. ‘Between ourselves, it was a damned cool bit of work, and I’m obliged to you. But for you, they might have given us the slip; they’d certainly have made some sort of fight of it. My congratulations, sir. I beg your pardon – more sugar?’

Well, this was Sunday in Brighton all of a sudden, wasn’t it, though? I’d hoped for acceptance, with or without the doubtful glances that have followed me round the world for eighty erratic years – but hardly for this. It didn’t make sense, even – for it was a damned unlikely tale, as he’d said.

‘Saving my poor veracity,’ says I, ‘you say you know it’s true?’ Flashy ain’t just bluff and manly, you see – he’s sharp, too, and I was playing my character. ‘May I know how?’

‘I’d not deny myself the pleasure of enlightening you,’ says he briskly. ‘We have known for some time that arms shipments, provided by a syndicate of British and American sympathisers, have been going up the Pearl to the Taipings – Shih-ta-kai, as your Chinese friend said. Who these sympathisers are, we don’t know –’ that was good news, too, ‘since the work was entirely overseen by a most skilful Chinese, a former pirate, who brought the arms to Macao, shipped them up the Pearl in lorchas, and passed them to the Taipings … where? To be brief, we smoked the pirate out a week ago, and he met with an accident.’ He set down his cup. ‘That forced the syndicate’s hand – they needed a new man, and they chose Ward, heaven knows why, since he knew nothing of the Pearl, or of China. But he’s a good seaman, they say, and from what we know, devoted to the Taiping cause. The idiot. And at the last moment, when he must have been wondering how the deuce he was going to find his way upriver, without a word of Chinese in his head, and rendezvous with the Taipings, you dropped into his lap. We may guess,’ says he, ‘what your fate must have been if he had reached his destination. But I’m sure you weighed that.’

I gave an offhand shrug, and when we’d picked the shattered remnants of my cup from the floor, he pinged his bell again. ‘Fortunately, we now had Mr Ward and his convoy under observation at Macao, and our sloops were waiting for him beyond the Second Bar. Come in!’ cries he, and the door opened to admit the prettiest little Chinese girl, in a flowered robe and high block shoes; a Manchoo, by her coiled hair and unbound feet. She smiled and bobbed to Parkes, and glanced sidelong in my direction.

‘An-yat-heh!’ snaps Parkes, and she turned and bobbed at me. I could only nod back, mystified – and then my heart lurched. She was washed and dressed and painted up like a Mandarin’s daughter, but there was no mistaking. She was the Hong Kong boat girl.

‘Thank you, An-yat-heh!’ says Parkes, and she bobbed again, shot me another slantendicular look, and pitti-pittied out.

‘An-yat-heh,’ says Parkes drily, ‘is a most capable and, I fear, most immoral young woman. She is also the best spy on the Pearl River. For the past week she has been keeping close watch on Frederick Townsend Ward. She saw his lorchas sail from Macao, and followed in a sampan manned by other of our agents. She would have contrived to get aboard the lorchas,’ he went on impassively, ‘even if you had not been there, for it was her task to see where the cargo was landed, in the event that Ward had eluded our patrols. She was surprised to learn, from eavesdropping on the crew, that you were apparently unaware of the true nature of the cargo – for of course the smugglers were not to know that you already had their secret, and spoke of you as a dupe, to be disposed of when you had served your purpose. She was pleased, she tells me, to discover that you were not one of the smugglers; in some ways she is a naive, affectionate girl, and seems to have formed an attachment to you.’

Whether this was accompanied by a leer, a frown, or nothing at all, I can’t say – knowing Parkes, probably the last. I was in too much mental turmoil to notice – by God, the luck! For it fitted – my tale to Parkes corroborated exactly what she must have told him of the voyage. But if I’d given him the stowaway yarn … it didn’t bear thinking about. I put it by, and listened to the brisk, impersonal voice.

‘She is, as I said, a resourceful young woman. When the sloop was sighted, she determined to draw your attention to the cargo, in the hope that when you saw how you had been deceived, you might cause some disturbance, and hinder their escape – as indeed you did. Having no English but pigeon, and doubting her ability to make you understand Cantonese, she hit on the novel plan of persuading you to open a chest by pleading with you for opium.’

I sat quiet for a moment – and if you want to know what I was thinking, it wasn’t what an almighty narrow shave I’d had, or of prayers of thanksgiving, or anything of that sort. No, I was asking myself when, if ever, I’d been so confoundedly fooled by two different women in the space of four days. Mrs Phoebe Carpenter and An-yat-heh, bless ’em. White or yellow, they were a hazardous breed in China, that was plain. Parkes, with the satisfied air of a rooster who has done crowing, was regarding me expectantly.

‘Well, she’s a brave girl,’ says I. ‘Smart, too. And you, sir, are to be congratulated on the efficiency of your secret service.’

‘Oh, we get about,’ says he.

‘I’m sorry that rascal Foster – Ward, did you say? – got clear away.’ I scowled, Flashy-like. ‘I’ve a score to settle with that one.’

‘Not in China, Sir Harry, if you please.’ He was all commissioner again. ‘He served you a scurvy trick, no doubt, but the less that is heard of this business the better. I shall require your word on that,’ and he gave me his stiff-collar look. ‘It has all been quite unofficial, you see. No British law has been broken. The gun-running offence took place within the Imperial Chinese Government’s jurisdiction; we had no legal right to detain or hinder Ward and his fellows. But,’ he gave another of his sour smiles, ‘we do have the gunboats. And since Her Majesty’s Government is strictly neutral as between the Imperials and the Taipings, it is certainly not in our interest that British citizens should be arming the rebels. A thought which prompted your own action, you remember. No.’ He squared off his pencils in columns of threes. ‘We must consider the incident happily – and in your case fortunately – concluded.’

That, of course, was the main thing. I was clear, by the grace of God and dear little An-yat-heh. There would be no inconvenient inquiries which might have led back to the conniving Mrs Carpenter – who, it occurred to me, might well be blackmailed to bed before I sailed for home. As for Ward, I’d not have gone near the dangerous brute; I gave Parkes my word with feigned reluctance.

‘He may not be such a rascal, you know.’ Parkes frowned, as though it irritated him to admit it. ‘He has courage, and his devotion to the rebel cause, if misguided, may well be sincere. There are times when I would be glad to be rid of the Manchoos myself. But that is not our concern.’ He sniffed. ‘For the moment.’

Not my concern at any time, old lad, thinks I. Now that I was apparently out from under, I was in a fret to get away from this omniscient satrap while the going was good. So I shuffled, and began to thank him, bluff and manly, and hope that I hadn’t been too great a nuisance, eh, to him and his gang of busybodies – when he stopped me with a knowing look, and pulled a Portent of Doom (a blue diplomatic packet, to you) from his desk.

‘There is another matter, Sir Harry – one which I fancy you will consider an amend for your recent adventure.’ Eyeing that packet, I suddenly doubted it. ‘You recall that I said I was unaware of your presence in China, until yesterday? Listen, if you please.’ He took a sheet from the packet. ‘Yes, here we are … “it is thought that Colonel Flashman may be en route through China. In that event, you are to require him to proceed forthwith to Shanghai, and there place himself at the disposal of H.M. Minister and Superintendent of Trade.”’

I’d known that packet was damned bad news as soon as I saw it. What the hell did they want me for – and on the eve of my sailing for Home, too? Whatever it was, by God, they weren’t coming between me and my well-earned idleness! I’d send in my papers first, I’d … Parkes was speaking, with that sharp, smug smile on his infernal face.

‘I was at a loss to know how to comply, when the sloop brought you here so unexpectedly opportune. Indeed, we should thank Mr Ward – for had you remained in Hong Kong it is odds that you would have sailed for England before I had time to inquire for you there. Our Chinese despatches can be infernally slow …’

In other words, if that bitch Carpenter hadn’t hocussed me up the Pearl with her lies, I’d have been safe and away. And now the Army had me again. Well, we’d see about that – but for the moment I must choke back my fury until I knew what was what.

‘How extraordinary!’ says I. ‘Well, what a fortunate chance! What can it mean?’

‘Why, they want you for the Pekin business to be sure!’ cries the bloody know-all. ‘The despatch is confidential, of course, but I think I may be forgiven if I tell you that Lord Elgin – whose Embassy to China will be made public shortly – has asked that you be attached to the intelligence staff. I think, too,’ and he was positively jocular, rot his boots, ‘that we may see the hand of Lord Palmerston here. My dear Sir Harry, allow me to congratulate you.’

At the beginning of this memoir I gave you my first Law of Economics; if I have one for Adversity it is that once your essentials are properly trapped in the mangle there’s nothing for it but to holler with a good grace and wait until they roll you out again. Not that hollering does any good, but it relieves the feelings, and mine were in sore need of release after my interview with Parkes. I vented them in a two-day spree in Canton, taking out my evil temper on tarts and underlings, and sleeping off the effects on the mail-boat down to Hong Kong.

For there was nothing to be done, you see. After three years of truly dreadful service, in which I’d been half-killed, starved, hunted, stretched on a rack, almost eaten by crocodiles, assaulted with shot and sabre, part-strangled by Thugs, and damned near blown from a cannon (oh, and won glorious laurels, for what they were worth), I’d been on the very point of escaping to all that made life worth living – Elspeth, with her superb charms and splendid fortune; ease, comfort, admiration, and debauchery – and through my own folly I’d thrown it away. It was too bad; I ain’t a religious man, but if I had been I swear I’d have turned atheist. But there it was, so I must take stock and consider.

There was no question of sending in my papers and going home, although it had passed through my mind. My future content rested too much on the enjoyment of my heroic reputation, which would have been dimmed, just a trifle, if I’d been seen to be shirking my duty. A lesser man could have done it, and naught said, but not Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., K.B.; people would have talked, the Queen would have been 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.’ Pause. ‘Once.’

Believe it or not, I could see he was in capital spirits, in his careful way – no nonsense about beating these fellows out of sight or being in Pekin next week, which you’d have got from some of our firebrand commanders. His doubts – about the French, and supply transport – were small ones. He would get Elgin and Gros to Pekin, without a shot fired if he could contrive it – but God help the Manchoos if they showed fight. Bar Campbell, there wasn’t a general I’d have chosen in his place. I asked him, what was the worst of it.

‘Delay,’ says he. ‘Chinese talk. Can’t have it. Drive on. Don’t give ’em time to scheme. Treacherous fellows.’

I asked him the best of it, too, and he grinned.

‘Elgin. Couldn’t be better. Clever, good sense. Goodbye, Flashman. God bless you.’

Perhaps he said more than that, but d’ye know, I doubt it – I can see him yet, bolt upright on his camp-stool, the lean, muscular arms folded across his long body, the grizzled whiskers like a furze-bush, chewing each word slowly before he let it out, the light eyes straying ever and anon to his beloved bull fiddle. As Wolseley strolled with me down to the jetty, we heard it again, like a ruptured frog calling to its mate.

‘The Paddy-field Concerto, with Armstrong gun accompaniment,’ says he, grinning. ‘Perhaps he’ll have it finished by the time we get to Pekin.’

I had learned all they could tell me, and since Hong Kong is a splendid place to get out of, I caught the packet up to Shanghai to present myself to Bruce, as directed. It was like going into another world – not that Shanghai was much less of a hell-hole than Hong Kong, but it was China, you understand. Down in the colony it was England peopled by yellow faces, and British law, and the opium trade, and all thoughts turning to the campaign. Shanghai was the great Treaty Port, where the Foreign Devil Trade Missions were – British, French, German, American, Scowegian, Russian, and all, but it was still the Emperor’s city, where we were tolerated and detested (except for what could be got out of us), and once you poked your nose out of the consulate gate you realised you were living on the dragon’s lip, with his fiery eyes staring down on you, and even the fog that hung over the great sprawling native city was like smoke from his spiky nostrils.

The Model Settlement was much finer than Hong Kong, with the splendid houses of the taipans, and the Bund with its carriages and strollers, and consulate buildings that might have come from Delhi or Singapore, with gardens high-walled to keep out the view – and then you ventured into the native town, stinking and filthy and gorged with humanity (with Chinese, anyhow), with its choked alleys and dung-heaps, and baskets of human heads hung at street-corners to remind you that this was a barbarous, perilous land of abominable cruelty, where if they haven’t got manacles or cords to secure a suspected petty thief, why, they’ll nail his hands together, you see, until they get him to the hoosegow, where they’ll keep him safe by hanging him up by his wrists behind his back. And that is if he’s merely suspected – once he’s convicted (which don’t mean for a moment that he’s guilty), then his head goes into the basket – if he’s lucky. If the magistrate feels liverish, they may flog him to death, or put the wire jacket on him, or fry him on a bed of red-hot chains, or dismember him, or let him crawl about the streets with a huge wooden collar on his neck, until he starves, or tattoo him to death.

This may surprise you, if you’ve heard about the fiendish ingenuity of Chinese punishment. The fact is that it’s fiendish, but not at all ingenious; just beastly, like the penal code of my dear old friends in Madagascar. And for all their vaunted civilisation, they could teach Queen Ranavalona some tricks of judicial procedure which she never heard of. In Madagascar, one way of determining guilt is to poison you, and see if you spew – I can taste that vile tanguin yet. In China, I witnessed the trial of a fellow who’d caught his wife performing with the lodger, and done for them both with an axe. They tried him for murder by throwing the victims’ heads into a tub of water and stirring it; the two heads ended up floating face to face, which proved the adulterers’ affection, so the prisoner was acquitted and given a reward for being a virtuous husband. That was, as I recall, the only Chinese trial I attended where the magistrate and witnesses had not been bribed.

So much for the lighter side of Chinese life, which I’m far from exaggerating – indeed, it was commonplace; after a while you hardly noticed the dead beggars in the gutters and cesspits, or the caged criminals left to starve and rot, or even the endless flow of headless corpses into the chow-chow water of the Yangtse estuary off Paoshan – a perpetual reminder that only a short way upriver, no farther than Liverpool is from London, the Imperials and Taipings were tearing each other (and most of the local populace) to pieces in the great struggle for Nanking. Imp gunboats were blockading the Yangtse within fifty miles, and Shanghai was full of rumours that soon the dreaded Chang-Maos, the Long-Haired Taiping Devils, would be marching on the Treaty Port itself. They’d sacked it once, years ago, and now the Chinese merchants were in terror, sending away their goods and families, and our consular people were wondering what the deuce to do, for trade would soon be in a desperate fix – and trade profit was all we were in China for. They could only wait, and wonder what was happening beyond the misty wooded flats and waterways of the Yangtse valley, in that huge, rich, squalid, war-torn empire, sinking in a welter of rebellion, banditry, corruption and wholesale slaughter, while the Manchoo Emperor and his governing nobles luxuriated in blissful oblivion in the Summer Palace far away at Pekin.

‘The chief hope must be that our army can reach Pekin in time to bring the Emperor to his senses,’ Bruce told me when I reported at his office in the consulate. ‘Once the treaty’s ratified, trade revived, and our position secure, the country can be made stable soon enough. The rebellion will be ended, one way or t’other. But if, before then, the rebels were to take Shanghai – well, it might be the last straw that brought down the Manchoo Empire. Our position would be … delicate. And it would hardly be worth going to Pekin, through a country in chaos, to treat with a government that no longer existed.’

He was a cool, knowledgeable hand, was Bruce, for all the smooth cheeks and fluffy hair that made him look like a half-witted cherub; he might have been discussing Sayers’s chances against Heenan rather than the possible slaughter of himself and every white soul on the peninsula. He was brother to Elgin, who was coming out as ambassador, but unlike most younger sons he didn’t feel bound to stand on his dignity.⁸ He was easy and pleasant, and when I asked him if there was a serious possibility that the Taipings might attack Shanghai, he shrugged and said there was no way of telling.

‘They’ve always wanted a major port,’ says he. ‘It would strengthen their cause immensely to have access to the outside world. But they don’t want to attack Shanghai if they can help it, for fear of offending us and the other Powers – so Loyal Prince Lee, the ablest of the rebel generals, writes me a letter urging us to admit his armies peacefully to Shanghai and then join him in toppling the Manchoos. He argues that the Taipings are Christians, like ourselves, and that the British people are famous for their sympathy to popular risings against tyrannical rulers – where he got that singular notion I can’t think. Maybe he’s been reading Byron. What about that, Slater – think he reads Byron?’

‘Not in the original, certainly,’ says the secretary.

‘No, well – he also extols the enlightened nature of Taiping democracy, and assures us of the close friendship of the Taiping government when (and if) it comes to power.’ Bruce sighed. ‘It’s a dam’ good letter. I daren’t even acknowledge it.’

For the life of me I couldn’t see why not. A Taiping China couldn’t help but be better than the rotten Manchoo Empire, whose friendship was doubtful, to say the least. And if we backed them, they’d whip the Manchoos in no time – which would mean the Pekin expedition was unnecessary, and Hope Grant and Flashy and the lads could all go home. But Bruce shook his head.

‘You don’t lightly overthrow an Empire that’s lasted since the Flood, to let in an untried and damned unpromising rabble of peasants. God knows the Manchoos are awkward, treacherous brutes, but at least they’re the devil we know. Oh, I know the Bishop of Victoria sees the finger of divine providence in the Taiping Rebellion, and our missionaries call them co-religionists – which I strongly suspect they’re not. Even if they were, I’ve known some damned odd Christians, eh, Slater?’

‘South America, what?’ says Slater, looking glum.

‘Besides, could such people govern? They’re led by a visionary, and their chief men are pawnbrokers, clerks, and blacksmiths! Talk about Jack Cade and Wat Tyler! Lee’s the best of ’em, and Hung Jen-kan’s civilised, by all accounts – but the rest are bloody-minded savages who rule their conquered provinces by terror and enslavement. Which is no way to win a war, I’d say. They’d be entirely unpredictable, with their lunatic king liable to have a divine revelation telling him to pitch out all foreign devils, or declare war on Japan!’

‘But suppose,’ I ventured, ‘the Taipings win, in the end?’

‘You mean,’ says Bruce, looking more cherubic than ever, ‘suppose they look likely to win. Well, H.M.G. would no doubt wish to review the position. But while it’s all to play for, we remain entirely neutral, respecting the Celestial Emperor as the established government of China.’

I saw that, but wondered if, in view of the possible Taiping threat to Shanghai, it mightn’t be politic to jolly along this General Lee with fair words – lie to him, like.

‘No. The Powers agree that all such overtures as Lee’s letter must be ignored. If I acknowledged it, and word reached Pekin, heaven knows what might happen to our forthcoming negotiations with the Imperial Government. They might assume we were treating with the rebels, and Grant might even have a real war on his hands. We may have to talk to the Taipings sometime – unofficially,’ says he, thoughtfully, ‘but it will be at a time and place of our choosing, not theirs.’

All of which was of passing interest to me; what mattered was that Elgin wasn’t due out until June, and as his personal intelligence aide I could kick my heels pleasantly until then, sampling the delights of Shanghai diplomatic society and the more robust amusements to be found in the better class native sing-songs and haunts of ill-repute. Which I did – and all the time China was stropping its dragon claws and eyeing me hungrily.

Pleasuring apart, the time hung heavy enough for me to do some light work with the politicals of the consulate, for we maintained an extensive intelligence-gathering bandobast, and it behoved me to know about it. It consisted mostly of strange little coolies coming to the back door at night with bits of bazaar gossip, or itinerant bagmen with news from upriver, the occasional missionary’s helper who’d been through the lines at Nanking, and endless numbers of young Chinese, who might have been students or clerks or pimps – all reporting briefly or at length to swell the files of the intelligence department. It was the most trivial, wearisome rubbish for the most part – there wasn’t, alas, an An-yat-heh among the spies to cheer things up – and devilish dull for the collators, who passed it on for sifting and summary by the two Chinese supervisors whose names, I swear to God, were Mr Fat and Mr Lin. By the time they’d pieced and deduced and remembered – well, it’s surprising what can emerge from even the most mundane scraps of information.

For example, it was the strangest thing that enabled us to foresee the end of the great siege of Nanking in April ’60. The Imperialists had huge entrenchments circling the city, and the river blockaded on both sides, but couldn’t breach the rebel defences. The Taipings, hemmed within the city, had various forces loose in the countryside, but nothing apparently strong enough to raise the siege. It was such a stalemate that a great fair had actually been established between the Imp lines and the city walls, where both sides used to meet and fraternise, and the Imps sold all manner of goods to the Taipings! They brought food, opium, women, even arms and powder, which the Taipings bought with the silver they’d found in Nanking when they captured it back in ’53.

A ludicrous state of affairs, even for China; it took my fancy, and when one of our spies sent down particulars of the market trading, I happened to glance through it – and noted an item which seemed a trifle odd. I ain’t given to browsing over such things, you may be sure, and I wish to heaven I’d never seen this one, for what I noticed proved to be a vital clue, and set Bruce thinking earlier than he need have done, with the most ghastly consequences to myself.

‘Here’s a rum thing, Mr Fat,’ says I. ‘Why should the Taipings be buying bolts of black silk? Dammit, they spent 500 taelsfn1 on it this week – more than they spent on cartridge. Are they expecting funerals?’

‘Most singular,’ says he. ‘Mr Lin, have the goodness to examine the return for last week.’

So they did – and the Taipings had bought even more black silk then. They clucked over it, and burrowed into their records, and came to an astonishing conclusion.

Whenever the Taipings undertook any desperate military action, they invariably raised black silk flags in every company, which their soldiers were bound to follow on pain of death – they even had executioners posted in the ranks to behead any shirkers, which must have done wonders for their recruiting, I’d have thought. And when we learned presently that the black silk had been sent out of the city to two of the Taiping armies in the field – the Golden Lions of the famous Loyal Prince Lee, and the Celestial Singers under Chen Yu-cheng – it was fairly obvious that Lee and Chen were about to fall on the Imp besiegers. Which, in due course, they did, and our knowing about it in advance enabled the Hon. F. W. A. Bruce to plan and scheme most infernally, as I said. (If you wonder that the Imps didn’t realise the significance of the black silk they were selling the Taipings – why, that’s the Imperial Chinese Army for you. Even if they had, they’d likely just have yawned, or deserted.)

I was fool enough to be mildly pleased at spotting the item – Fat and Lin regarded me with awe for days – but I wasn’t much interested, having discovered far more important matter in the secret files, which enabled me to bring off a splendid coup, thus:

It appeared that Countess H—, wife of a senior attaché at the Russian mission, paid weekly visits to a Chinese hairdresser, and, under the pretext of being beautified, regularly entertained four(!) stalwart Manchoo Bannermen in a room above the shop, later driving home with a new coiffure and a smug expression.

[Official conclusion by Fat and Lin: the subject is vulnerable, and may be coerced if access should be required to her husband’s papers. Action: none.]

[Unofficial conclusion by Flashy: the subject is a slim, vicious-looking piece who smokes brown cigarettes and drinks like a fish at diplomatic bunfights, but has hitherto been invulnerable by reason of her chilly disdain. Action: advise subject by anonymous note that if she doesn’t change her hairdresser, her husband will learn something to her disadvantage. Supply her with address of alternative establishment, and arrange to drop in during her appointments.]

So you see, you can’t overestimate the importance of good intelligence work. Fascinating woman; d’you know, she smoked those damned brown cigarettes all the time, even when … And kept a tumbler of vodka on the bedside table. But I digress. Bruce was preparing his bombshell, and it was on my return from an exhausting afternoon at the hairdresser’s that he informed me, out of the blue, that he was sending me to Nanking.

There was a time when the notion of intruding on the mutual slaughter of millions of Chinese would have had me squawking like an agitated hen, but I knew better now. I nodded judiciously, while my face went crimson (which it does out of sheer funk, often mistaken for rage and resolution) and my liver turned its accustomed white. Aloud I wondered, frowning, if I were the best man to send … a clever Chinese might do it better … one didn’t know how long it would take … have to be on hand when Elgin arrived … might our policy not be compromised if a senior British officer were seen near rebel headquarters … strict neutrality … of course, Bruce knew best …

‘It can’t be helped,’ says he briskly. ‘It would be folly not to employ your special talents in this emergency. The battle is fully joined before Nanking, and there’s no doubt the Taipings will crush the Imps utterly in the Yangtse valley, which will alter the whole balance in China; at a stroke the rebels become masters of everything between Kwangsi and the Yellow Sea.’ He swept his hand across the southern half of China on his wall map.

‘I said some weeks ago that a time might come when we must talk to the Taipings,’ says he, and for once the cherub face was set and heavy. ‘Well, it is now. After this battle, Lee’s hands will be free, and it’s my belief that he will march on Shanghai. If he does, then we and France and America and Russia can ignore the Taipings no longer; we’ll be bound to choose once and for all between them and the Manchoos.’ He rubbed a hand across his jaw. ‘And that’s a perilous choice. We’ve avoided it for ten years, and I’m damned if I want to see it made now, in haste.’

I said nothing; I was too busy recalling, with my innards dissolving, that at the last great battle for Nanking, when the Taipings took it in ’53, the carnage had been frightful beyond contemplation. Every Manchoo in the garrison had been massacred, 20,000 dead in a single day, all the women burned alive – and it would be infinitely worse now, with both Taipings and Imp fugitives joining in an orgy of slaughter and pillage, raping, burning, and butchering everything in sight. Just the place to send poor Flashy, with his little white flag, crying: ‘Please, sir – may I have a word …?’

‘We can only maintain a de facto neutrality by keeping ’em at a distance,’ Bruce was saying. ‘If they advance on Shanghai, we’re bound either to fight – and God help us – or come to terms with them, which the Manchoos would regard as a flagrant betrayal – and God help our Pekin expedition. So it is our task to see that the Taipings don’t come to Shanghai.’

‘How the deuce d’you do that?’ I demanded. ‘If they beat the Imps at Nanking, and have blood in their eye, they won’t stand still!’

‘You don’t know the Taipings, Sir Harry,’ says he. ‘None of us does – except to know that with them anything is possible. I think they’ll come to Shanghai – but this crazy king of theirs is capable of declaring a Seven Year Tranquillity, or some such stuff! Or launching his armies west to Yunnan. It is possible they may do nothing at all. That’s why you must go to Nanking.’

‘What can I hope to accomplish?’ I protested, and he took a turn round the room, fingered a few papers, sat down, and stared at the floor. Devising some novel means of plunging me into the soup, no doubt.

‘I don’t know, Sir Harry,’ says he at last. ‘You must persuade ’em not to march on Shanghai – at least for a few months – but how you’re to do it …’ He lifted his head and looked me in the eye. ‘The devil of it is, I can’t send you with any authority. I’ve not replied to Lee’s letter, but I’m having a verbal hint discreetly conveyed to him that he may expect a … an English visitor. No one official, of course; simply a gentleman from the London Missionary Society who wishes to visit the Heavenly Kingdom and present his compliments. Lee will understand … just as he will understand what is meant when the gentleman expresses the opinion – merely the opinion, mind you – that while a Taiping attack on Shanghai would destroy any hope of British co-operation, restraint now would certainly not incline us to a less favourable view of their overtures in the future.’

‘I can see myself putting that in fluent Mandarin!’ says I, and he had the grace to shrug helplessly.

‘It is the most I can authorise you to convey. This is the most damned ticklish business. We have to let them see where we stand – but without provoking ’em into action, or offending ’em mortally (dammit, they may be the next government of China!), or, above all, being seen to treat with them in any official way whatsoever. That’s why your presence is a gift from God – you’ve done this kind of business in India, with considerable success, as I recall.’ Well, that was so much rot; my diplomatic excursions had invariably ended in battle and beastliness on the grand scale, with my perspiring self barely a length ahead of the field. He got up and glowered at the map, chewing his lip.

‘You see how difficult it is for me to give you guidance,’ says he. ‘We do not even know what kind of folk they truly are. The Heavenly King himself has hardly been seen for years – he keeps himself secluded in a great palace, surrounded by a thousand female attendants, thinking wonderful thoughts!’ I was willing to bet he didn’t spend all his time thinking. ‘If he could be persuaded to inaction … to hold Lee in check …’ He shrugged. ‘But who is to say if he is even rational, or if you will be allowed near him? If not, you must do what you can with Loyal Prince Lee.’

A splendid choice, you’ll agree, between a recluse who thought he was Christ’s brother, and a warlord who’d done more murder than Genghiz Khan.

‘The only other who may be open to reason is the Prime Minister, Hung Jen-kan. He’s the wisest – or at least the sanest – of the Taiping Wangs. Mission educated and speaks English. The rest are ignorant, superstitious zealots, drunk on blood and power, and entirely under the sway of the Heavenly King.’ He shook his head. ‘You must use such tactful persuasions as seem best; you will know, better than I could tell you, how to speak when you are face to face with them.’

In a high-pitched shriek, probably. Of all the hopeless, dangerous fool’s errands … supposing I even got there.

‘How do I reach Nanking? Aren’t the Imps blockading the river?’

‘A passage has been booked on Dent’s steamer Yangtse. She got through to Nanking last week – the Imps give our vessels passage, and the river will be clear as far as Kiangyin still. If she’s stopped there you must go on as seems best; one of our people, a missionary called Prosser, will be looking out for you – you’ll have papers from the London Missionary Society, in the name of Mr Fleming, but the Taipings will know precisely who and what you really are, although neither they nor you will acknowledge it.’

So it was settled; I was for the high jump again, and not a damned thing to be done about it. He went over it all a second time, impressing on me the delicacy of the task, how H.M.G. must be in no way compromised, that every week of delay would be a godsend – but the main thing was to convince this crew of homicidal madmen that, whoever they killed next, it shouldn’t be done at Shanghai.

‘Well, sir,’ says I, all noble and put-upon, ‘I’ll be honest; I’ll try, but I don’t think there’s a hope of success.’

‘Another man might say that out of reluctance to go, for his safety’s sake,’ says he solemnly. ‘I know that with you, the thought of danger has not crossed your mind.’ He was right there; it had stayed rooted. ‘God bless you, Sir Harry.’ And with the angels choiring above us, we shook hands, and I marched out, and bolted for the lavatory.

I had my Adams in my armpit, a Colt in my valise, a hundred rounds, a knife in my boot, and a bulky notebook containing every known fact about the Taipings, courtesy of Messrs Fat and Lin, when I boarded the Yangtse on the following evening. It was a good two-day run to Nanking, in ideal conditions; at present, it might take a week. I was too sick and scared and furious to pay much heed to my surroundings, and as I remember the Yangtse was like any other river steamboat – half a dozen cabins aft for the Quality, of whom I was one, a couple of saloons below for those who couldn’t afford a bunk, and forward a great open steerage for the coolies and the like. Her skipper was one Witherspoon, of Greenock, a lean pessimist with a cast in his eye and a voice like coals being delivered. I’ve no doubt I spent the time before we cast off brooding fearfully, but I don’t recall, because as I leaned on the rail looking down on the quay and the oily water, I saw about the only thing that could have provided any distraction just then.

The steerage gangway was swarming with coolies, and poorer Chinese, and a few white riff-raff – Shanghai was well stocked with poor whites and shabby-genteel half-castes and scourings from half the countries on earth, even in those days. There was Lascars, of course, and Dagoes of various descriptions, Filipinos, Greeks, Malay Arabs, and every variety of slant-eye. Some of ’em were half-naked; others carried valises and bundles; the half-dozen Sikh riflemen who acted as boat-guards shepherded ’em aboard none too gently under the great flickering slush-lamps which cast weird shadows on the dockside and the steerage deck.

I was watching with half my mind when I noticed a figure stepping from quay to gangway – and even in that motley assembly it was a figure to take the eye – not only for the outlandish cut of attire, but for style and carriage and … animal quality’s the only phrase.

I like tall women, of course. Susie Willinck comes to mind, and Cleonie of the willowy height, and the superb Mrs Lade by name and nature, and Cassy, and that German wench in the Haymarket, and even such Gorgons as Narreeman and Queen Ranavalona. Mind you, there’s much to be said for the little ’uns, too – such as the Silk One, Ko Dali’s daughter, and the little blonde Valla, and Mrs Mandeville the Mad Dwarf, and Whampoa’s playmates, and Takes-Away-Clouds-Woman, and that voluptuous half-pint, Yehonala (but we’ll come to her presently). On the whole, though, I ain’t sure I don’t prefer the happy medium – like Elspeth, and Lola, and Irma, and Josette, and Fetnab, and … Elspeth.

It is no disrespect to any of these ladies, all of whom I loved dearly, to say that when it came to taking the eye, the female coming up the steerage gangplank was the equal of any and all. For one thing, she was six feet six if she was an inch, with the erect carriage of a guardsman, and light on her feet as a leopard. She was Chinese, beyond a doubt, perhaps with a touch of something from the Islands; when she laughed, as she did now, to the squat fellow behind her, it was with a deep, clear ring, and a flash of teeth in a lean, lovely face; not Chinese style, at all. She had a handkerchief bound tight round her head, and for the rest her clothing consisted of a blouse, cotton breeches ending at the knee, and heavy sandals. But round her neck she had a deep tight collar that seemed to be made of steel links, and her arms, bare to the shoulder, were heavy with bangles. As to the lines of her figure, Rubens would have bitten his brush in two.

With the plank crowded ahead of her, she had to wait, holding the side-rail in one hand and lolling back at full stretch, carelessly, laughing and talking to her companion. She chanced to look up, and met my eye; she said something to the man, and looked at me again, laughing still, and then she was up the plank like a huge cat and out of sight.

I’m not the most impressionable of men, but I found I was gripping the rail with both hands, and clenching my jaw in stern resolve. By gum, I couldn’t let that go unattended to. Built like a Dahomey Amazon, but far taller and incomparably more graceful. And possibly the strongest female I’d ever seen, which would be an interesting experience. No common woman, either; how best to coax her up to the cabin? Probably not money, nor a high hand. Well, the first thing was to get a closer look at her.

I waited till we had cast off, and the screw was churning the water, with the lights on Tsungming Island glittering in the dark distance far ahead. Then I asked the steward where the ladder was to the steerage; he pointed down the companion, and said I would find the mate by the saloon door, he’d show me. Sure enough, a fellow in a pilot cap came out of the saloon and started up the ladder as I started down. He glanced up, smiling, starting to bid me good evening, and then his jaw dropped, and my hand shot under my jacket to the butt of the Adams.

It was Mr Frederick Townsend Ward.

For perhaps five seconds we just stared at each other, and then he laughed, in the pleasantest tone imaginable.

‘Well, damn me!’ says he. ‘It’s the Colonel! How are you, sir?’

‘Keep your hands in front of you – sir,’ says I. ‘Now come up, slowly.’ I stepped back to the cabin deck, and he followed, still grinning, glancing at my hidden hand.

‘Say, what’s the matter? Look, if that’s a piece under your coat – this is a law-abiding boat, you know—’

‘You mean she isn’t running guns to the Taipings?’

He laughed heartily at this, and shook his head. ‘I gave that up! Say, and you took a shot at me – two shots! What did you do that for? You weren’t going to come to any harm, you know. I’d ha’ taken you back to Macao when we’d delivered the goods!’ He sounded almost aggrieved.

‘Oh, forgive me! No one told me that, you see. It must have slipped everyone’s mind, along with the trivial fact that you were carrying guns, not opium.’

‘Listen, Carpenter said the less you knew the better,’ says he earnestly. ‘Those were his orders. The damned dummy,’ he added irritably. ‘If he’d ha’ given me a real Chink pilot, we’d never ha’ seen that Limey patrol-boat. Hey, how did you come out of that, though?’

‘Perhaps I didn’t.’ I said it on the spur of the moment, and his eyes widened.

‘You don’t mean they broke you?’ He whistled. ‘Gee, I’m sorry about that! I sure am, though.’ Absolutely, he sounded shocked. ‘Over a passel o’ guns. Well, I’ll be!’ He shook his head, and smiled, a mite sheepish. ‘Say, colonel … why don’t you let that hog-leg alone, and come on in my berth for a drink? See here, I’m sorry as hell – but t’wasn’t my fault. ’Sides, it’s over and done with now.’ He looked at me, half-grinning, half-contrite. ‘And you’re ahead o’ me by two shots. No hard feelings. Okay?’ And he held out his hand.

Now, I know a rogue when I see one – and I was forming a strange suspicion that Mr Ward wasn’t a rogue at all. Oh, I’ve known charming rascals, bland as be-damned, and the eyes give them away every time. This fellow’s were bright and dark and innocent as a babe’s – which you might say was all against him. And yet … he sounded downright pleased to see me. I couldn’t credit he was that good an actor; and why should he trouble to be? There was nothing I could do to him, now; certainly not here.

‘I ought to blow your blasted head off!’ says I.

‘You dam’ near did!’ cries he cheerily, and when I continued to ignore his hand: ‘Okay, you’ve got a right to be sore, I guess. But why don’t we go lower a couple, anyway? I’m off watch.’

Indeed, why not? I can only say he was a hard man to refuse, and the truth is I was curious about him. He was a rare bird, I felt sure, so I followed him out of the warm night into the stuffy little cabin, where he seated me on the bunk and poured out two stiff tots. ‘Say, this is fine!’ says he, sitting on the locker. ‘How’ve you been?’ And without letting me reply he rattled off into a recital of his own escape through the paddy, and how he’d smuggled himself back to Macao, and thence up the coast to Shanghai, where he’d flourished his papers at Dent’s, and got himself a mate’s berth. I watched him like a hawk, but he was easy as old leather, prattling away. Crazy, undoubtedly, but if he was crook, it didn’t show.

‘It’s not a bad berth,’ says he, ‘but I won’t stick. Fellow called Gough, one of your people, commands a gunboat flotilla for the Imps. He’s offered me second place on the Confucius; reckon I’ll take it.’

‘What happened to the notion of being a Taiping prince?’ I asked, and he grinned and pulled a face.

‘No, sir, thank you. I’ve had a look at ’em, these past few weeks. They’re not for Fred T.’ He shook his head so firmly that, thinking of my own mission, I pressed him for information.

‘Well, all this stuff about being Christians – they don’t have the first notion! They have a lot o’ mumbo-jumbo about Jesus, that they’ve picked up an’ got wrong, but … Listen – to give you an idea, when they get a new recruit they give him three weeks to learn the Lord’s Prayer, and if he can’t – whist!’ He chopped his hand against his neck. ‘No fooling! Now, what kind of Christianity is that, will you tell me? And they treat the people something shameful. Take all their goods – ’cos no one can have property in the Taiping, it’s all in common, ’lessn you’re one of the top Wangs. And they put ’em to work in companies, like it was the army, and if they’re too old or sick to work – whist again! And everybody has to work for the Taiping, see, and obey all their foolish rules about religion, an’ learn the proclamations of the Heavenly King by heart – and, boy, they’re the wildest stuff, I tell you! The Thousand Correct Things, an’ the Book of Celestial Decrees, and nobody understands ’em a little bit!’

I said the missionaries were all for them, and he shook his head again. ‘Maybe they used to be, but now they’ve had a good look. You go upriver, into a Taiping province, you see the ruin, the gutted villages, the bodies laying about in thousands – and it ain’t as if all their rules and discipline made things better – why, they make it worse! Nobody has land, so nobody can plant ’cept the Taiping tells him, an’ the local governors, why, they have to wait for orders from further up, an’ the fellow further up … well, there’s nothing in it for him, and he probably used to be a shoemaker, anyway, so what does he know about crops? He knows the rules, though, and learns a new chapter of the Bible each day, and thinks Moses was a Manchoo Mandarin who thought better of it!’

I recalled that the Heavenly King himself had been an educated man, and while he was crazy there must be some Taipings who knew how things should be run; he scoffed me out of court.

‘That kind of person – you mean merchants and clerks and fellows with some schooling – they have no time for the Heavenly Kingdom; they’re mostly dead, anyway, or made themselves scarce. Why should they truck with a crowd that just robs ’em and says they’re no better’n the peasants? ’Sides, they can see the Taipings are only good at killing and stealing and laying waste.’

‘You seem to have learned a lot in a short time,’ I said, and he replied that one trip up to Nanking, and a look at the country around, had been enough for him. ‘They’re so mean and cruel,’ he kept saying. ‘Sure, the Imps are worse – their army’s rotten, and they just use the war as an excuse for plundering and killing wherever they go – but at least they’ve got something behind them, I mean, a real government, even if it doesn’t work too well … a … a … sort of like the Constitution. I mean … China.’ He grinned ruefully, and poured me another drink. ‘I don’t make it too clear, I guess. But the Taipings just have this crazy dream – and they’re no good at making things work. Well, the Imps aren’t much better, maybe, but at least they can read and write.’

I asked if he had seen anything of the leading Taipings at Nanking, and he said, no, but he had heard plenty. ‘They do all right, from what I hear – that’s what really got my goat. There’s all this fine talk about love and brotherhood and equality – but the Wangs live in palaces and have a high old time, while the people are tret no better’n niggers. You know,’ says he, all boyish earnestness, ‘at the beginning, they made the women and men stay apart – there was a special part of Nanking for the girls, and if they and the boys … you know … why, they just killed ’em. Even now, ’lessn you’re married – well, if you … you know … they just – whist! The poor people are allowed one wife, but the Wangs …’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘They have all the girls they want, and aren’t there some doings in those palaces? So I heard.’ I found this quite cheering, and pressed him for further details, but he didn’t have any. ‘It’s one law for the rich and another for the poor, I guess,’ says he philosophically. ‘Mind, they’ve done some good things, like not letting girls bind their feet, and don’t they come down hard on crooks and shysters, though! Stealing, opium-smoking, girls selling themselves, anything illegal at all – or even just talking out of turn – and off comes the head. I’ve seen that.’

I wondered how long the people would endure a rule quite as despotic as the Manchoos’, and even less efficient, and he laughed.

‘Wait till you see those Taiping soldiers! One thing they’re good at is discipline – putting it on the people, and taking it themselves. That’s why they can whip the Imps, easy; they’re real good, and so are their generals. I’ll tell you something, an’ the sooner all our people realise it, the better – this here’s going to be a Taiping China, for keeps, unless we – I mean you British and us Americans, and the French maybe, do something about it.’ He’d become very earnest, rapping his finger on the locker; a serious lad, when he wasn’t being crazy. But all his talk about the Wangs and their women had reminded me of what I’d been about in the first place, so presently I left him and strolled down to the steerage. Besides, my chat with him had almost been in the way of duty, and I was due for a spell of vicious recreation.

It was full night now, and we were thumping upstream with the Tsungming lights to starboard and the last warmth dying from the night wind. The great steerage deck, poorly lit, was littered with sleepers, and I was about to turn back, cursing, and wait until daylight, when I heard voices forrard. I picked my way over the bodies and rounded the deckhouse in the bows, and my heart gave a lustful little skip – there was the slim, towering figure at the bow-rail, talking with a couple of Chinese rivermen; they turned to glower at me, and then the girl laughed and said something, and the Chinks melted into the dark, leaving the two of us alone under the bow-lamp. She lounged with her elbows on the rail – Jove, what a height she was, topping me by a good four inches. I stepped up to her, lustfully appraising the play of the superb muscles on the bare bangled arms, the lazy grace of the splendid body, and the sensuous hawk face above the strange chain collar. Aye, she was ready to play; it was in every line of her.

‘Hiya, tall girl,’ says I, and she shot me an insolent, knowing look, like a vain tart.

‘Gimme smoke, yao,’ says she, extending a palm. ‘Yao’ is ‘foreigner’, and not at all polite from a Chinese to a white man.

‘The black smoke, or one of these?’ I offered my cheroot case, and the slant eyes flickered.

‘A fan-qui who speaks Chinese? A cheroot, then.’ Certainly not a common woman; she spoke Pekin, albeit roughly. I lit her a cheroot, and she held my hand with the match in slender fingers whose grip made me tingle; not a whore’s touch, though, just simple strength. She inhaled deeply – and so did I, gloating.

‘Come to my cabin,’ says I, slightly hoarse, ‘and I’ll give you a drink.’

She showed her teeth, gripping the cheroot. ‘There’s only one thing you want to give me,’ says she – and named it, anatomically.

‘And right you are,’ says I, quite delighted. This was something new in Chinese women – coarse, insolent, and to the point – so to show my own delicacy and good breeding I gripped her port tit; under the thin blouse it felt like a large, hard pineapple. She gave a little grunt, and a long, slow, wicked smile at me, drawing on her cheroot.

‘How much cash?’ says she, narrow-eyed.

‘My dear child,’ says I, gallantly relinquishing her poont, ‘you don’t have to pay me! Oh, I see … why, I wouldn’t insult you by offering money!’ Wouldn’t I, though – I was boiling fit to offer her the Bank, but I guessed it wouldn’t answer with this one, in spite of her question. She had a damned leery look in her eye, sensual and calculating, but with a glint of amusement, unless I was mistaken.

‘No cash, hey? But you expect me to——?’ Her vocabulary was deplorable, but at least it left no room for misunderstanding.

‘That’s the ticket,’ says I heartily, ‘so instead of further flirtation I suggest that we—’

Suddenly she chuckled, and then laughed outright, with her head back and everything quivering to distraction. I was preparing to spring when she came up off the rail, bangles tinkling, and stood looking down at me, the ogre’s missus contemplating a randy Jack-the-Giant-Killer. It’s a rum feeling, I can tell you, being surveyed by a beauty half a head taller than you are. Stimulating, though.

‘Suppose,’ says she, in that soft deep voice, ‘that I took payment? I might rob a rich fan-qui.’

‘You might try, Miranda. Now then—’

‘Yes, I might. And if you, big clever fan-qui, caught me …’ She put her hands on her hips, with that lazy smile. ‘… you might beat a poor girl – would you beat me, fan-qui?’

‘With pleasure,’ says I, slavering at the prospect. She nodded, glanced either way, gave me her insolent grin again, drew deep on the cheroot – and pulled the front of her blouse down to her waist.

For a moment I stood rooted, hornily agog before all that magnificent meat, and then, as any gentleman would have done, I seized one in either hand, nearly crying. Which was absolutely as the designing bitch had calculated – she suddenly gripped my elbows, I instinctively jerked them down to my sides, and without stooping, or shoulder movement, or the least exertion at all, she lifted me clean off the deck! I was too dumbfounded to do anything but dangle while she held me (thirteen-stone-odd, bigod!) with only the strength of her forearms under my rigid elbows, grinned up into my face, and spoke quietly past the cheroot:

‘Would you really beat a poor girl, fan-qui?’

Then before I could reply, or hack her shins, or do anything sensible, she straightened her arms upwards, holding me helpless three feet up in the air, before abruptly letting go. I came down cursing and stumbling, clutching at the deckhouse for support. By the time I’d recovered my balance, she was modestly replacing her blouse, taking a last pull at the cheroot, and flicking it over the rail. She put a hand on her hip, grinning derisively, while I seethed with rage and shame – and awe at the realisation of that appalling strength.

‘All right, then, damn you!’ I snarled. ‘Twenty dollars? Fifty if you’ll stay the night!’

God, how she laughed, the strutting, arrogant slut – and she’d lifted me like a kitten! I don’t know when I’ve felt so mortified – or so determined to have my way with a woman. Well, it wasn’t going to be rape, that was sure – nor money, apparently.

‘Fifty dollars?’ She laughed. ‘No, fan-qui – nor fifty thousand, from a weakling. But a strong man, now …’ She waited, with that taunting, confident smile, daring me, as I fell to raging at her and then to whining, saying it had been a trick, she’d taken an unfair advantage, damn her … and then I gave a great gasp, like Billy Bones in apoplexy, rolled my eyes, clutched my heart, and reeled fainting against the deckhouse … well, she’d not have been human if she hadn’t stepped up for a closer look, would she?

I bar hitting women, except for fun, especially when they’re strong enough to uproot the town hall clock, but I was choking with vengeful fury – toss me about like thistledown, would she, the infernal slut? I let out a whimpering groan, and as she advanced, alarmed, I let drive my right into her midriff with all my force; she doubled up like a rag doll, her knees buckling, and I was on her back in an instant, twisting the chain collar like a garotte, flattening her by sheer weight. She clawed back at me over her shoulder, and I shot my left hand under her arm and on to the nape of her neck in a half-nelson. I was blind with rage and fit to murder, and if she’d been less abominably powerful I might have done it. But as she heaved and strained beneath me it was all I could do to hang on, doing my damnedest to choke her with the steel links biting into her throat. We thrashed and rolled about the deck, her long legs flailing; thumping against the bulkhead, then against the rail, my aching fingers twisting the collar ever tighter, her splendid shoulders heaving to break my grip – God, she was strong, and I knew in a few seconds she must break the lock.

I gave one last despairing heave on the collar, and suddenly felt her slacken beneath me; her head gave a little beneath my left hand, and I roared with triumph. Suddenly her free hand was slapping the deck, in the age-old wrestler’s submission; I clung to the chain like grim death.

‘Had enough, damn you?’ I wheezed. ‘Give over, you bloody monster?’ Slap-slap, on the deck, I let the collar slacken an inch – and suddenly she reared up, breaking the headlock and tearing the collar free. I rolled away, preparing to fly for my life, when I realised she was scrambling back, holding her throat, her other hand up to ward her face. Was she beat? Was this the moment to set about her with my belt? – and then I realised that she was poised on one knee, ready for battle … and she was absolutely grinning at me, bright-eyed … and we were no longer alone.

The unholy row had attracted half Kiangsu Province, by the look of it, certainly every coolie on the steerage deck, and a ragged mob was staring from either side of the deckhouse, with her Chinese rivermen to the fore, looking mighty truculent. As they pressed forward I put my back to the rail, reaching for the Adams – which I’d forgotten until that moment. The sight of it stopped them dead, the rivermen’s hands came away from their knife-hilts – and the girl stood up, her shoulders shuddering and heaving, and grunted something in river dialect. Then she looked at me, gasping and rubbing her throat, and so help me, she was grinning again, positively amiable.

Tuckered as I was, I wondered bemusedly if that murderous struggle had been the usual courting ritual of this female Goliath; lust revived as I observed her fine dishevelment, with one udder peeping provocatively out of her blouse; I put up the Adams, scowled back at the mob, and then jerked my head at her. She grinned broader than ever, taking in great breaths and rubbing her throat, but then she shook her head.

‘Good night … fan-qui,’ says she, pretty hoarse, and then she turned and disappeared into the staring rabble behind her. Truth to tell, I didn’t much mind; I was bruised and exhausted, and another bout would have carried me off; if that was what she was like merely fighting for her life, God knew how she’d behave in amorous ecstasy. I straightened my coat and pushed through the crowd, marvelling at the minds (and bodies) of women – treat ’em civilised, and they swing you round their heads; strangle ’em, and suddenly they’re all for you. Because there was no doubt about it, now; she fancied me. It’s all a matter of the proper approach.

I knew better than to seek her out next day, as we steamed up the sluggish Yangtse; the consummation of our wooing would be all the better for keeping. I saw her once, as I paced the upper walk after tiffin; she was standing in the steerage, gazing up, and raised a hand and gave her lazy smile at sight of me. I smiled back, surveying her carefully like a farmer at the stock-ring, then nodded as one satisfied for the moment, and turned away to resume my stroll. Aye, let her wait. I had other matters to occupy me, during the day at least; I chewed the fat with Ward, boned up on my Taiping notebook, wondered when the devil Bruce’s agent would turn up, and was first in quest of news at every village landing-place.

The crisis was plainly at hand upriver. Off Tungchow, a downriver boat informed us that the great battle about Nanking had become a rout, with the Taipings everywhere victorious; Chen’s Celestial Singers were driving through to relieve the capital, while General Lee was driving the Imps like sheep and breaking their blockade on the river.

‘And ye ken what that’ll mean,’ declares Skipper Witherspoon ominously. ‘Every scoondrel in an Imp uniform’ll be castin’ awa’ his coat and turnin’ bandit. It’ll be worse than Flodden. Goad help the country! We’ll no’ see Nanking this trip, I’m thinkin’; we’ll dae well if we get the boat’s neb twenty miles past Kiangyin.’

This was serious, for it meant that the last fifty miles of my journey would be through lawless country scourged by Imp deserters and Taiping fanatics. Well, they could count me out; if there was no sign of Bruce’s man, I’d turn back with Yangtse when Witherspoon decided he’d reached the safety limit; I couldn’t be blamed, if the country was impassable. But I knew Bruce wouldn’t care for that, and I was still studying to find a good excuse when we pulled in at Kiangyin late in the afternoon. It was the usual miserable hole of mud buildings and rickety bamboo wharves, with the usual peasants gaping apathetically, and stinking to wake the dead – the peasants and Kiangyin both. Beyond the town, stale paddy stretched away to the misty distance, with a few woods here and there, and the inevitable agriculturists and bullocks standing ankle-deep. A depressing spectacle, in no way redeemed by the appearance of the Rev. Matthew Prosser, B.A., God rest him.

He came aboard like a vessel of wrath, stamping up the gangway and roaring, a small, round, red-faced cleric with corks hanging from his hat like an Australian swagman, a green veil streaming behind, an enormous dust-coat, and a fly-whisk which he used as a flail on hindering Orientals. Behind him tottered an urchin with his valise, and Prosser was furiously demanding the cabin steward when his eye lit on me, and he started as though he’d been stung. He kept darting furtive glances at me while he hectored the steward, and was no sooner inside his cabin than the door opened again, and his crimson face appeared, crying: ‘Hist!’

I went over, and he dragged me in and slammed the door.

‘Not a word!’ cries he, and stood, listening intently with his corks bobbing. Then, in a thunderous whisper: ‘I’m Prosser. How-de-do. We shall be bearing each other company, I believe. Say nothing, sir. Remember Ehud: “I have a secret errand unto thee, oh King; who said, keep silence”.’ And he gave an enormous wink, which in that furious red face was positively alarming. ‘Be seated, sir! There!’ He pointed firmly to the bunk, and began rummaging like a terrier in his valise.

As it happened, I remembered Ehud, the Biblical left-hander who was adept at sticking knives in folk, which was a portent if you like. As to Prosser, he seemed such an unlikely agent that I asked him if he knew Bruce in Shanghai, and he rounded on me with bared teeth. ‘Not another word! Discretion, sir! We must bind our faces in secret. Now where,’ he snarled, rummaging again, ‘did I put it? Aha, I have it! The cup was found in Benjamin’s sack!’ And he lugged out a rum bottle which must have held half a gallon. He beamed, peered at the level (which was marked in pencil), set it on the table, and caught my eye.

‘Well, Balshazzar drank wine, did he not?’ cries he. ‘But only after sundown, sir. And then but a small measure, against the evening chill. Yes. Now, sir, attend to me if you please. I believe you speak Mandarin? Good.’ He seemed vastly relieved. ‘Then when we have reached our destination, I shall make you known to a certain personage, and leave you to your business.’ He nodded heavily, glanced at the bottle, and muttered something about the Lord being good to them that wait.

‘But you’ll be staying with me in … where we’re going?’ says I. He might not be much, but he’d be better than nothing.

He shook his head angrily. ‘No such thing, sir! I am known, you see, and they watch me, and send forth spies that they may take hold of my words. You will do better without me – indeed, the less we are seen together, the better, even now. And once I have made you known, discreetly, to one who, like Timothy, is faithful in the Lord … faithful, I say … then my task is done. Besides, I have my own work!’ And he glared at the bottle again, while I concluded that the faithful one must be the Loyal Prince, General Lee Hsiu-chen of the Taipings. Why the devil couldn’t he say so, instead of acting like Guy Fawkes?

This was disconcerting. I’d supposed I would be dry-nursed to Nanking by some capable thug who not only knew the Taipings backwards, but could give me all manner of useful tips, and do most of the work, with luck. Instead, here was this bottle-nosed parson, who didn’t want to be seen near me, couldn’t wait to get shot of me, and daren’t even say the simplest thing in plain language.

I said I must have some information, and he said, quite short, that he hadn’t any. I pointed out that the boat might not go as far as Nanking, in which case he’d have to be seen in my company, probably trudging through bandit-infested country. He didn’t take this kindly, but growled that if the hosts of Midian were prowling, the Lord must see us through, and cheered me up no end by producing an ancient muzzle-loader revolver from his valise and jamming rounds into it, twitching towards his bottle the while.

I gave up, and left him with a nasty reminder that sundown wasn’t for another half-hour. As soon as the door closed I heard the cork pop. Be not among wine-bibbers, thinks I, and recalling that that verse ended with reference to riotous eaters of flesh, went in search of dinner.

Well, it was all sufficiently hellish. How, I asked myself for the thousandth time in my life, had I got into this? A couple of months earlier I’d been homeward bound, and now I was heading on a secret mission that made my flesh crawl, into the bloodiest civil war ever known, on a rickety steamboat in company with the likes of the Reverend Grogpickle and Frederick Townsend Ward who, between them, probably had as sure a touch for catastrophe as any pair I’d ever struck. Stay, though – there was my wrestling wench down on the steerage deck. A bout with her in my cabin might not disperse the blue-devils entirely, but God knows when I’d have another chance. I finished my dinner quickly, and went out on the upper deck.

We were well up from Kiangyin by now, but what kind of country we were in it was impossible to tell. The sky overhead was clear enough, with a bright silver moon, but the river itself was shrouded with fog, and we were pushing into the fleecy blanket at slow ahead, the siren hooting dismally. Traces of it hung like wraiths on the narrow promenade outside the cabins, with a clammy touch on the skin; the sooner I was snug with my giantess, the better.

Out of curiosity I stuck my head into Prosser’s cabin, and he was flat on his back and snoring in an atmosphere you could have cut up and sold in the pubs. And I was just pulling the door to again when a sudden tremendous shock threw me off my feet, the Yangtse shuddered like an earthquake, plates shattered in the dining-saloon, and faint cries of alarm sounded from the steerage deck. The boat lurched, and stopped, and began to swing. She was aground.

I pulled myself up, damning Witherspoon or whoever was at the wheel – and in an instant was flat on my face again as a ragged volley of shots came out of the mist to port, smashing a window overhead and splintering woodwork, someone shrieked in pain, the brazen clash of a gong started beating out on the water, and the night was rent by a chorus of infernal yelling from beneath the stern. Shots were cracking out, mingled with the explosion of fire-crackers – one landed within a foot of me, snapping and sending out a shower of sparks – something hit the Yangtse a grinding jar on her quarter, and close at hand were racing feet and Ward’s voice yelling:

‘Pirates! Stand to! Pirates!’

To race into my cabin, seize the Adams, and ram handfuls of loose rounds into my pockets was the work of a few seconds; to guess what had happened took even less time. River bandits, or possibly Imp fugitives turned brigand, had somehow blocked the channel and were about to swarm aboard – that thump under the stern had been a raft or sampan, crowded with Chinese savages who would pour over us in a wild, slashing wave, slaughter and torture most hideously whoever survived the attack, loot and burn the steamer, and be off into the web of side-creeks before the nearest Imperial garrison was any the wiser. I’d seen it in Borneo, and knew precisely what to expect – which is why you now behold the unusual spectacle of Flashy making towards the scene of action, and not fleeing for cover – of which there wasn’t any.

For I knew that in this kind of ambush the first sixty seconds was the vital time. That wild volley, the ridiculous fire-crackers, the clashing gong and the howling chorus – these were the war-whoop, designed to freeze the victim in terror. Our attackers would have few firearms; they’d rely on cold steel – swords, knives, kampilans, axes, Aunt Jemima’s hatpin – to hack down opposition, and once they were on our decks in force we were done for. Catch ’em with a brisk fire before they could board, and we stood a fair chance of driving them off.

I pounded along the narrow promenade to the after rail and could have whooped with relief at the sight of two Sikh guards on the wide stern deck ten feet below me, blazing away at the devil’s crew who were tumbling over the quarter-rail. About half a dozen had reached the deck, horrible creatures in loin-cloths and pigtails, wielding swords, others in peasant dress with spears and knives, shrieking contorted yellow faces everywhere – and the two Sikhs with their Miniés calmly picked their men and tumbled ’em with well-placed shots.

‘Reload! Reload!’ I bawled, to let ’em know they were covered, for they’d been about to drop their empty pieces and draw their swords, which would have been suicide. One Sikh heard me, and as I opened fire with the Adams he and his mate were whipping in fresh charges. I knocked over two with five shots, and with four down they wavered at the rail. I was feverishly pushing in fresh loads when I heard another revolver, and there was Witherspoon beside the Sikhs, booming away across the smoke-filled deck.

I heard feet behind me, and there was Ward, pistol in hand. ‘Get forrard!’ I yelled. ‘They’ll come at the bow, too!’ He didn’t hesitate, but turned and went like a hare – you’ll go far if you live through this, thinks I, and in that moment I heard the screams and yells and clash of steel from the steerage forrard, and knew that they were into us with a vengeance. I turned to the rail again – and here was more bad news, for Witherspoon’s gun was empty, one of the Sikhs was down, and the other was laying about him with his rifle-butt. A dozen pirates were on the deck, and even as I let fly again I saw Witherspoon cut down by a gross yellow genie with a kampilan. I blazed away into the brown, and now the vicious horde had spotted me, yelling and pointing upwards. A shot whistled overhead and a spear clattered on the bulkhead behind me – and I thought, time to go, Flashy my son.

For it was all up. God knew what was happening at the bow, but the brutes were well established here, and in two minutes they’d be butchering the coolies and cutting down the remaining crew. My plan was already formed: time to reload, down to the saloon deck or even lower, and at the first sight of the enemy, over the side and swim for it. And after that the Lord would provide, God willing. Which reminded me of Prosser, but he was a certain goner, drunk and damned.

I came down the ladder at a race, reloading frantically, and reached the saloon deck. All hell was breaking loose on the steerage forrard; I heard the crash of the Miniés – Ward must have the remaining Sikhs at work. Then down to the main deck – I knew there was no way through from the stern; the pirates there would have to climb up to the saloon deck and come down as I had done. I slipped through the door to the open steerage, and it was like Dante’s Inferno.

A battle royal was raging round the deckhouse forrard, but nothing to be seen for smoke. Nearer me, coolies were going over the rail like lemmings, apart from a sizeable group over to starboard who were wailing fearfully and evidently trying to burrow through the deck. For twenty feet in front of me the port side of the deck was almost clear as a result of the coolie migration – by God, here were two of ’em coming back over the rail! And then I saw the glittering kampilans and the evil, screaming faces, and I shot the first of them as he touched the deck. The second, a burly thug in embroidered weskit and pantaloons, with an enormous top-knot on his bald skull, sprang down, waving an axe, and I was about to supply him with ballast when a fleeing coolie cannoned blindly into me, I went sprawling – and my Adams clattered away into the scuppers.

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