Flashman on the March. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ a parcel of Fenian thieves,’ says Speedy, ‘but well worth their salt when they form square. Did you hear that they went on an almighty drunk, and when Cooper swore they’d be left down-country their spokesmen asked for fifty lashes a man if only they could join the advance? What could Cooper do but pardon them, the impudent rascals?’

      The Provost-Marshal was called to take charge of the remaining boxes, and I commended my Bootnecks to him as the best guard for the dollars he could hope to find. Their sergeant smiled for the first time in our acquaintance, and I supplied a little touch of Flashy by thanking him and his file for their good and trusty work, shaking hands with each man by name, which I knew must go well. Popularity Jack, that’s me.

      The weight of the specie was such that we needed half a dozen beasts apart from our own,²² and Speedy decided that so many led-horses must slow us down, so a half-section of the Scinde Horse were whistled up, stalwart frontier riders in the long green coats and trowsers, with red sash and puggaree, that I hadn’t seen since the Mutiny, each man with a twin-barrelled rifle and sword – not the chaps I’d have picked myself, since half of them were Pathans who’d sooner steal than sleep. But Speedy swore by them, and to my gratification their havildar was a leathery veteran from the Mogala country who claimed to remember ‘Bloody Lance’, as he addressed me, pouring out the old tale of how Ifflass-mann slaughtered the four Gilzais – so much lying tommyrot, you understand, but I daresay I could still dine out on it in the caravanserais along the Jugdulluk road.^fn9

      We saddled up, Speedy inspecting the saddlebags on every ‘Scindee’, and then we set ahead through the bedlam of the camp; five miles it stretched from the Zoola causeway, on either side of the railway tracks, with the two locomotives puffing and squealing up and down. They weren’t used on the causeway itself, for fear of their weight causing a landslip. What with piled gear, work gangs, Ab vendors who’d set up their stalls as a bazaar in the tent-lines, and no attempt to bring order to the camp, it took us the best part of an hour to reach open country, and Speedy cursed the delay. I didn’t mind, for there was plenty to take the eye, chiefly the Shoho girls with their saucy smiles and hair frizzed into great turbans, bare to their loin-cloths and well pleased with the catcalls they drew as they sashayed along with their pots balanced on their heads.

      ‘Fine crop of half-caste babes there’ll be by Christmas,’ says Speedy. ‘Can’t blame our fellows either; ’tain’t often they run into beauties like these beyond the borders.’

      There was an elephant train loading up on the edge of the camp, half a dozen of the enormous brutes kneeling, each beside a sloping ramp up which the great mortars and Armstrong guns were being hauled to be secured on platforms on the elephants’ backs. Speedy explained that there was no other way the heavy artillery could be carried through the ravines and along the narrow winding paths cut into the cliff-sides in the high country; the lighter mountain guns could be taken apart and carried by led-mules.

      ‘That old Baluch major was right, you see. We stand or fall on animal transport; without it we’re dead in our tracks in the middle of nowhere. And transport depends on forage, and forage depends on money.’ He slapped his saddlebag of coin. ‘That’s Napier’s life-blood you’ve brought us. This’ll keep him going for a day or so, and God willing the mules’ll bring up the rest within the fortnight.’

      ‘Can we count on the tribes for supplies? Some of the fellows at tiffin seemed to think they might fight.’

      He shook his head. ‘Not at the moment. They’re too glad to see us – and our dollars. Fact is, the common folk would like nothing better than to have us conquer the country and rule it. We pay, we’d give ’em peace from their endless civil wars, protect ’em from rebels and bandits and locusts and slavers, maybe even relieve their poverty – d’you know that many are so poor they’ll sell their wives and daughters, even? They’re priest-ridden, too; their kangaroo Christian church gets two-thirds of the peasantry’s produce – aye, two-thirds! The king and their chiefs get a cut of what’s left, so there ain’t too much over for the brigands to pinch, is there?’

      I wondered if we’d add Abyssinia to our savage possessions, but he said there was no chance of that. ‘We’re here to free the prisoners – bus!’^fn10 says he. ‘Oh, the chiefs are all for our removing Theodore and installing one of them in his place, but Napier won’t play politics, or take sides, and so he’s told ’em. They can’t believe we ain’t bent on conquest – and I daresay our European pals and the Yankees share their view – but they’re dead wrong. Even the Tories think Britannia’s got quite enough empire, thank’ee very much, and stands in no need of the most advanced barbarians in Africa, whose idea of politics is civil war and massacre. Anyway,’ he added, ‘what profit is there in a country that’s mostly rock and desert? Why, no colonists would look at it!’

      I asked what had brought him here, into Theodore’s service, too, and why he’d left it. He rode for a moment in thought, chin down on his chest, and then laughed almost as though he was embarrassed.

      ‘Blowed if I can think of one good reason! They’re a murderous lot of pirates, cruel, untrustworthy, immoral, and bone idle – and I like ’em! Why? ’Cos they’re brave, and clever, and love to laugh, and they’re so dam’ contradictory!’ He pointed to a herd of bullocks that were being driven into a corral by Ab cow-whackers. ‘Those fellows are so sharp they’ll get the better of our commissaries at a bargain, bamboozle ’em with figures – and yet they can’t write, and believe that we’re buying the bullocks as food for the elephants! And that’s the God’s truth.’ He paused, and laughed again. ‘But I guess my best reason for liking Habesh – that’s Arabic for Abyssinia – is that they like us. We treat ’em fair, and unlike the rest of Africa they’re smart enough to admire us, and know they can learn from us, from our engineers and scientists, aye, and our military. You know what they call us? The Sons of Shaitan – and it’s a compliment!’

      ‘And Theodore? You must know him better than anyone else.’

      ‘I don’t know him at all. No one does.’ He took off his specs and polished them carefully. ‘He’s not just one man, he’s many – and they’re all dam’ dangerous. You’re going to ask me what he’s liable to do, will he fight, will he run, will he hold the captives to ransom, will he murder them – and I haven’t the foggiest notion. So I’ll not try to answer. Better to let Napier tell you.’

      And that, I may tell you, sent a shiver down my spine for it prompted the question why Napier should want to tell me anything at all. I was pondering this when Speedy added:

      ‘As to why I left Theodore, ’twas because he’d been listening to lies about me, and I’d no wish to wake up some morning face down on a bed of spear-points. So I asked for my back pay and a clear road. “Suppose I’ll not let you leave?” says he.

      ‘“Then I’ll fight,” says I, “and you know I’m not an infant.”

      ‘“I can have you killed,” says he.

      ‘“Ah, but how quickly?” says I, and laid my hand on my hilt. He had no fear, but he paused, and then smiled and embraced me and said I should have my money, a horse, and a spear, and God be with me.’ He chucked his reins. ‘Let’s raise the pace, shall we?’

      From Zoola the barren scrub-land rises slowly to the base of the hills, and it took us five hours’ uncomfortable riding across stone-choked dry river beds and little slithering screes before we came to the plateau from which you could look back at the huge panorama of the distant camp like a sand-table model, and Annesley Bay with its forest of shipping, and the Red Sea beyond. Ahead of us lay the way station of Koomaylee, in a broad basin with sheer cliffs towering on either hand and a massive rampart of stone before us, crimson in the sunset save for the gloomy СКАЧАТЬ