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 main-sail 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 billyho 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 thema. 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