Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 4: Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman on the March, Flashman and the Tiger. George Fraser MacDonald
Читать онлайн книгу.
going on round Chingpu’s high mud walls.
We’d heard the guns before we came in view, and they were banging away splendidly, wreathing the walls and gate-towers in thick grey smoke, while dead to our front great disorderly lines of men were advancing to the assault. To my astonishment I saw they were Imps, straggling along any old how, but in the van there was a fairly compact company in green caps, and I knew these must be Ward’s people. Without a glass I couldn’t make them out clearly, but they were holding together well under the fire from the walls, and presently they were charging the main gate, while the Imp supports milled about and let off crackers and waved banners in fine useless style.
Farther back, behind the attackers, were more Imp battalions by a river-bank, with a gunboat blazing away at nothing in particular, and about a mile away on my right was a low hill on which a couple of banners were flying, with a number of mounted men wheeling about and occasionally dashing out to the attacking force. Gallopers; the hill must be the attackers’ head-quarters, so it behoved me to make for it. I was just pointing it out to my escort when there was a tremendous pandemonium from the plain before the town, the boom of guns and crackle of musket-fire redoubled, the crimson Taiping banners were waving wildly along the walls, and suddenly in the smoke-clouds before the gate there was a great glare of orange light followed by the thunderous roar of an explosion.
That was Ward’s lads mining the main gate, and as the smoke cleared, sure enough, one of the supporting towers was in ruins, and green caps were surging into a breach as wide as a church. At this the Imps, seeing their side winning, set up a huge halloo and went swarming in to join the fun; in a moment the whole space before the breach was choked with men, while the supporting lines, throwing disorder to the winds, crowded in behind, blazing away indiscriminately – and that should have been the end of Chingpu. What the attackers had forgotten, or didn’t know, was that they were assaulting a stronghold commanded by Loyal Prince Lee. They were about to find out, and it was a sight to see.
All along the front wall it was like an enormous football scrimmage; there must have been hundreds trying to get to the breach, and more arriving every second. On the side wall nearest to me there wasn’t a single attacker, and now a banner waved on the battlements, a side-gate opened, and out came a column of Taiping red-coats, trotting orderly four abreast. They streamed out, hundreds strong, rounding the front angle, and went into the attacking mob like a scarlet thunderbolt. At the same moment, from the other side of the town, a second Taiping column completed the pincer movement, the black silk flags went up, and within five minutes there wasn’t a living attacker within quarter of a mile of Chingpu, and the whole Imp rout was streaming back towards the river, utterly broken. I never saw a neater sally in my life; as the Taipings broke off the pursuit and began to strip the dead, I reflected that it was as well Jen-kan wasn’t seeing this, or he might have entertained doubts about Shanghai’s ability to hold Lee at bay.
But you don’t dally on the touch-line when the game’s over; I wheeled my pony and made for the head-quarters hill, keeping well to flank of the fleeing Imps, with my escort thundering along behind. The gallopers and standard-bearers were streaming away over the brow, so I circled the hill and found myself in a little wood beyond which lay a broad sunken road, with what looked like a party of sightseers coming down it. There was a disconsolate chap in a green cap carrying a banner which he was plainly itching to throw away, a few stragglers and mules, two minions carrying a picnic basket, and finally, flanked by a galloper with his arm in a bloody sling, and a noisy cove in a Norfolk jacket and gaiters, came a sedan chair, borne by perspiring coolies and containing Frederick T. Ward.
I almost didn’t recognise him at first, for he was swathed in bandages like an Egyptian mummy, with his leg in a splint and a big plaster on his jaw, but it didn’t stop him talking, and I’d have recognised that staccato Yankee voice anywhere. The Norfolk jacket had just finished roaring, in a fine Dixie accent, that he didn’t know wheah Ned Forrestuh wuz, an’ he didn’t dam’ well cayuh, neethuh, an’ if Forrestuh had jest waited till the flanks wuz covered they wouldn’t ha’ bin cotched like a nigguh with his pants down in the melon-patch, it was downright hoomiliatin’.
“Now, you find him damned quick!” snaps Ward. “If he got out – and I hope to God he did – you tell him to get back to Sungkiang with every man he’s got! No, the hell with the gunboat, let the Imps worry about it! For all the good it was we’d ha’ been better with a canoe! Now, get going – Sungkiang, remember! Spitz, find the doctor – I want our casualty count – not the Imps! Goddam it, if only I could walk!”
“An’ whayuh the hell do Ah git goin’ to?” bawled the Norfolk jacket, raising arms to heaven. “’Lessn Forrestuh’s daid, he’ll be back at the rivuh by naow, an’ … holy baldhead, who the hell is that?”
I had reined up by the road, and he was gaping at me, so I gave a cheery wave and sang out: “Just a tourist, old fellow. Hollo, Fred – been in the wars, I see!”
None too tactful, you may say, but no reason for the Norfolk jacket to leap three feet and yell: “Cover him, Spitz! He’s a chang-mao!”
“Don’t be a damned fool, I’m nothing of the sort!” says I. “Do I look like one?”
“They do!” he roars, pointing, and I realised that Jen-kan’s four thugs were lurking modestly behind me, on the fringe of the wood, and there was no denying, they had Taiping haircuts.
“Hold your fire!” I shouted, for Spitz, the wounded galloper, was unlimbering an enormous pistol. “Ward, I’m Flashman! We’re friends! They’re not Taipings … well, they are, but they ain’t hostile! Call him off, Fred, will you?”
He was looking at me as though I were a ghost, but he signed Spitz to put up his piece. “What’n tarnation are you doing here?”
“Going to Shanghai,” says I. “So will you, if you’ve any sense.”
“He’s an Englishman!” cries the Norfolk jacket. “Like Trent an’ Mowbray! Ah kin tell by his voice!”
“I know what he is!” says Ward impatiently, and to me: “I thought you were at the bottom of the Yangtse! Where the dooce have you been?”
“That’s a long story. First, if you don’t mind …” And I turned and waved away my escort, who wheeled and vanished into the wood on the instant, like sensible lads. Spitz raised a great outcry, and the Norfolk jacket waved his arms.
“Savage is English, too, an’ he’s with the Taipings!” he bellowed. “Seed the son-of-a-bitch on the wall this mawnin’, bold as brass –”
“I told you to go find Forrester!” barks Ward, and winced. “Damn this leg! Spitz, will you get that casualty count!” D’you know, they went like lambs; he was still young Fred Ward, but he’d grown some authority, all right.
“Well, I swan!” He shook his head at me. “You back in British service, or what? I thought you said they busted you over that Pearl River business?”
“No-o, you said that, and I didn’t contradict you. I’m still staff colonel.”
“Is that a fact?” He was grinning, although the pale young face was pinched with pain. “And those four – were they on the staff, too? Oh, who cares! Come on, Dobbin!” He waved to the coolies, who heaved up the sedan again. “They don’t gallop, exactly, and I’d as soon the Long-Hairs didn’t catch up with me!”
I told him about Lee’s forthcoming advance as we went, not mentioning Jen-kan, and he never took those bright black eyes off me, although he winced and gasped as he was bounced along. When I’d done, he whistled and swore.
“Well, there goes Sungkiang, I guess. In which case, the hell with it, I’m going to France, and have a rest.” He squinted at me. “It’s pukka – that Lee’s coming?”
“Yes, and the less you say about it, the better. We don’t want him to know he’s expected, do we? But, look here – if you can’t hold Sungkiang, hadn’t you better pull back to Shanghai?”
“I’ve