Flash for Freedom!. George Fraser MacDonald

from a pantomime, every man with his hankie knotted round his head, armed to the teeth, some of ’em with rings in their ears, and one even with a patch over his eye. It struck me – what would Arnold say if he could look down now from his place at the right hand of God? Why, there, he would say, is that worthy lad, Tom Brown, with his milk-and-water wife in the West Country, giving bread and blankets to needy villagers who knuckle their heads and call him ‘squire’: good for you, Brown. And there, too, that noble boy Scud East, lording it over the sepoys for the glory of God and the profit of John Company – how eminently satisfactory! And young Brooke, too, a fearless lieutenant aboard his uncle’s frigate Unspeakable – what a credit to his old school! Aye, as the twigs are bent so doth the trees grow. But who is this, consorting with pirates and preparing to ship hapless niggers into slavery, with oaths on his lips? I might have known – it is the degraded Flashman! Unhappy youth! But just what I might have expected!

      Aye, he would have rejoiced at the sight – if there’s one thing he and his hypocritical kind loved better than seeing virtue rewarded, it was watching a black sheep going to the bad. The worst of it is, I wasn’t there of my own free will – not that you ever get credit for that.

      These philosophical musings were disturbed by the tender scene between Mr and Mrs Spring as he prepared to board the canoe. Unlike the rest of us, he was dressed as usual – dark jacket, round hat, neck-cloth all trim – how the devil he stood it, in that steaming heat, I can’t figure. Well, at the last minute, Mrs Spring leans over the ship’s side crying to him to take his comforter ‘against the chill of the night’. This in a country where the nights are boiling hot, mark you.

      ‘D--nation!’ mutters Spring, but out he climbed, and took the muffler, crying goodbye, my dear, goodbye, while the men in the canoe grinned and looked the other way. He was in a fine temper as we shoved off, kicking the backside of the cabin boy – who had been ordered to come along – and d--ning the eyes of the man at the tiller.

      Just as we pushed out into mid-stream came another diversion – from the jungle on the landward side of the stockade came a distant murmuring and confused sound. As it grew nearer you could hear that it was a great shuffling and moaning, with the occasional shout and crack of a whip, and a dull chanting in cadence behind it.