Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 4: Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman on the March, Flashman and the Tiger. George Fraser MacDonald
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Chapter 9
I reached Shanghai at midnight, and the smell of fear was in the air already. Word had run ahead of Ward’s debacle at Chingpu, and that it had been caused by none other than the terrible Loyal Prince Lee himself, who could now be expected to sweep on and overwhelm the city. Even the street lanterns seemed to be burning dimmer in apprehension, and I never saw fewer civilians or more troops abroad in the consular district; usually gates were wide, with lights and music from the houses within, and carriages and palkis moving in the streets; tonight the gates were closed, with strong piquets on guard, and occasional files of marines hurrying along, their tramp echoing in the silence.
Bruce had gone to bed, but they rousted him out, and for once his imperturbability deserted him; he stared at me like a stricken seraph, hair all awry where he’d hauled off his nightcap, but once he’d decided I wasn’t dead after all he wasted no time, but called for lights to his study, thrust me into a chair, ordered up brandy and sandwiches and told me to talk as I ate.
“You’ve got two weeks,” I told him, and launched into it – the date of Lee’s advance, his probable strength, Jen-kan’s conspiracy to ensure his failure – at which he exclaimed in disbelief and even Slater, his secretary, stopped taking notes to gape at me – and then such secondary matters as their detention of yours truly, and those impressions I’d formed which seemed important in the present crisis. I talked for an hour, almost without pause, and he hardly said a word till I’d done, when:
“Thank God I sent you to Nanking!” says he. “We’ve been growing surer by the week that he was coming, but no hint of the date – you’re positive we have two weeks?”
“Ten days, if you like, certainly no less. It’s my guess he’ll put paid to Ward at Sungkiang before he marches on Shanghai.”
“It would be a public service if he did!” exclaimed Bruce. “That Yankee upstart is a greater embarrassment than the French priests!”20
“He might buy you a few days if he’s strong enough,” I reminded him. “I’d turn a blind eye to his recruiting, anyway, if I were you.”
He sniffed, but said he’d make a note of it, and then told me with some satisfaction how he’d been urging the consuls and the Imps for weeks past to put the city in a state of defence; now that they had definite word, and a date, his hand would be strengthened tremendously, and by the time they had improved the fortifications and called in more troops, Lee could whistle for Shanghai, however many Taipings he had at his back. For which, he said handsomely, they were deeply indebted to me, and Lord Palmerston should know of it.
Well, I always say, credit and cash, you can never have too much of either, but the best news he gave me was that he was sending me north without delay to join Elgin, who had just made his landing at the mouth of the Peiho with Grant’s army, and was preparing to advance on Pekin. “There is nothing you can do here, now, my dear Sir Harry, to compare with what you have already done,” says he, all smiles, “and it is of the first importance that Lord Elgin himself should have your account of the Taipings without delay. There will be endless chin-chinning with the Emperor’s people, you may be sure, before he reaches Pekin, and your intelligence will be of incalculable value.”
I heard him with relief, for I’d been fearful that he’d want to keep me by him to advise about Lee’s army, and if there was one place I’d no desire to linger just then, it was Shanghai. You see, Bruce, like Jen-kan, might be certain that Lee was going to get a bloody nose, but I wasn’t; I’d seen his long-haired bastards making mincemeat of Soochow, and I’d no wish to be among the gallant defenders when their black flags went up before our walls. So I looked knowing and serious, and admitted that I’d be glad to get back to proper campaigning again, and he and Slater exchanged glances of admiration at this soldierly zeal.
They couldn’t wait to be rid of me, though; I’d been looking forward to a few days loafing and being lionised, and several restorative romps with my Russian man-eater at the hairdresser’s – I hadn’t had a woman since my last bout with Szu-Zhan (God, what an age ago that seemed) and I didn’t want to forget how it was done. But no; Bruce said I must take the fast steam-sloop for the Peiho that very morning, because Elgin would be in a sweat to have me on hand, and mustn’t be kept waiting. (It’s astonishing, how even the best men start falling over themselves in a fret when it’s a question of contenting their elder brother.)
So now you find Flashy beating nor’-west by south or whatever the proper nautical jargon may be, thundering amain o’er the trackless waste o’ waters – which I did by dossing for fourteen hours straight off, and if there was a typhoon it was all one to me. For the first time in months – since I boarded the steamer Yangtse, in fact – I was free of all care, content to be tired, with nothing ahead but a safe, leisurely campaign in good company, while behind lay the nightmare, ugly and confused; not near as bad as some I’ve known, but disturbing enough. Perhaps it was those unreal weeks in Taipingdom that made the memories distasteful; stark danger and horror you can either fight or run from, but madness spreads a blight there’s no escaping; it still made me feel vaguely unclean to think of Lee’s sharp, crazy eyes, or the blank hypnotic gaze of the arch-lunatic on that incredible night, with the joss-stench like a drug, and those wonderful satin bodies writhing nakedly … by Jove, there’s a lot to be said for starting a new religion. Or the Bearer of Heavenly Decrees, maddeningly out of reach … and far better, the lean face smiling wickedly above the chain collar, and the long bare-breasted shapeliness lounging at the rail. And then the crash of shots, the screaming faces and whirling blades surging out of the mist … masked figures and steel claws dragging me through the dark … red-coated legions stamping up the dust like Jaggernauts … black silk flags and burned corpses heaped … a fat, smiling yellow face telling me I knew too much to live … a crippled figure swathed in bandages urging on his fools to die for a handful of dollars … that same boy’s face distorted with horror as a cageful of poor wretches was plunged to death in a mere spiteful gesture. Surely China must have exhausted its horrors by now?
So I thought, in my drowsy waking, like the optimistic idiot I was. You’d think I’d have known better, after twenty years of counting chickens which turned out to be ravening vultures. For China had done no more than spar gently with me as yet, and the first gruesome round of the real battle was only three days away.
That was the time it took from the Yangtse to the mouth of the Peiho, the great waterway to Pekin, and you must take a squint at the map if you’re to follow what happened to me next. The mouth of the Peiho was guarded by the famous Taku Forts, from which we had been bloodily repulsed the previous year, when the Yankees, watching on the touchline, had thrown their neutrality overboard in the crisis and weighed in to help pull Cousin John Bull out of the soup.21 The Forts were still there, dragon’s teeth on either bank, and since Elgin couldn’t tell whether the Manchoos would let us pass peacefully or blow us to bits, he and Grant had wisely landed eight miles farther up the coast, at the Pehtang, from whence they and the Frogs could march inland and take the Forts from the landward side, if the Chinks showed any disposition to dispute our passage.
From the Peiho mouth to the Pehtang the sea was covered with our squadrons; to the south, guarded by fighting ships, were the river transports waiting to enter the Peiho when the Forts had been silenced; for the moment they lay safe out of range. Farther north was the main fleet, a great forest of masts and rigging and smoking funnels – troop transports with their tow vessels, supply ships, fighting sail, steamships, and gunboats, and even junks and merchantmen and sampans, with the small boats scuttling between ’em like water-beetles, rowed by coolies or red-faced tars in white canvas and straw hats. It takes a powerful lot of shipping, more than two hundred bottoms, to land 15,000 men, horse, foot, guns, and commissariat, which was what Grant and Montauban had done almost two weeks earlier, and by all accounts it was still bedlam at the Pehtang landing-place.
“Won’t have you ashore until tomorrow, colonel, at this rate,” says my sloop commander, and being impatient by now to be off his pitching