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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cries he. I roared to him to holster his piece, heard Parkes yelling in front of me, and saw that he and Loch had reined up by a little silk pavilion where a mandarin was sitting a Tartar pony, with officers at his back; it was our acquaintance of yesterday, who had lost his spurs at Sinho. As I rode up to them, Parkes was shouting something about safe-conduct, but now there was a crowd of angry Imps in the way; they’d spotted us as enemy, clever lads, and were crowding in, waving fists and spears; suddenly there seemed to be contorted yellow faces all round us, screaming hate. Above the din I heard the mandarin cry out something about a prince; then Parkes was calling across the crowd to me. “Wait for us, Sir Harry! Prince …” And then he and Loch and one of the sowars were galloping off with the mandarin.
“Come back!” I roared. “Parkes, you idiot!”, for it was plain that our one hope was the mandarin, and we should all stay with him. Roaring to Anderson to hold on, I drove through the press in pursuit; by the time I’d cleared that howling mob my quarry was wheeling into a gully a furlong ahead, and I cursed and thundered after them. I plunged into the gully, and there they were, not twenty paces off, reined up before a group of magnificently-armoured Manchoo horsemen, banners planted in the turf beside them, and Parkes was pointing to the white rag on the sowar’s lance-point. I pulled up, and the leader of the Manchoos was standing in his stirrups, screaming with laughter, which seemed damned odd till I saw who it was: Prince Sang-kol-in-sen. In fine voice he was.
“You ask safe-conduct! Foreign filth! Crawling savages! You who would shame the Son of Heaven, and who come now treacherously to attack us! Barbarian lice! Offal! And now you come whining –”
The rest was lost in howls of hatred as his followers closed in; I saw Parkes struggling with a mounted rider, and thought “McNaghten!”32 Loch was knocked flying from the saddle, and the Sikh was thrashing with his lance as they bore him down. I didn’t linger; I was round and out of that gully like a guilty squirrel – and slap in front of me was a boiling crowd of Imp braves, with Anderson’s party struggling desperately in the middle. A musket barked, and I saw a Sikh reel in the saddle; then the sabres were out, Sikhs and dragoons laying about them, with Anderson yelling to close up; a ragged volley of musketry, a Sikh going down, the answering crash of revolver fire, Bowlby blazing away wild-eyed until he was dragged from the saddle, Nolan bleeding from a sword-cut on the brow as he drove through the press – I heard him shriek as he pitched forward over his horse’s head into the crush. It didn’t matter now; I stared appalled at that hideous mêlée, and turned to flee.
But they were streaming out of the gully, too, Tiger soldiers with drawn swords, and at their head the white-button mandarin and half a dozen mounted monsters in black bamboo armour and helmets, brandishing pennoned spears and screaming blue murder. I put my beast to the bank; he scrambled up, reared, and fell back, and I rolled clear just in time. There was a side-gully and I raced up it, howling as I went, and came down headlong over a pile of stones; I scrambled afoot, mouthing vainly for help, there wasn’t a friendly soul in sight, Loch and Parkes might be dead by now, hacked to pieces – well, by God, thinks I, if it must be, I’ll make a better end than that. I swung to face them, whipping out my sabre and dropping a hand to my pistol-butt as that devil’s horde bore down on me.
Even for old Flashy, you see, there comes the moment when you realise that, after a lifetime of running, you can’t run any longer, and there’s only one thing for it. I gritted my teeth and ran at them, spun the weapons in my hands, and bawled in my best Chinese:
“Quarter! I surrender! I’m a British staff colonel and you touch me at your peril! My sword, your excellency!”33
a Rumour.
For a well-decorated hero I’ve done a deal of surrendering in my time – which is doubtless why I remain a well-decorated hero. Piper’s Fort, Balaclava, Cawnpore, Appomattox – I suppose I can’t count Little Big Horn, because the uncivilised rascals wouldn’t accept it, try as I might – and various minor capitulations. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, which young military men should bear in mind, it’s that the foeman is generally as glad to accept your surrender as you are to give it. Mind you, he may turn spiteful later, when he’s got you snug and helpless (I often do), but that’s a risk you must run, you know. Most of my captors have been decent enough.
The Chinese were not. You’d have thought, the trouble I saved ’em, they might have shown me some consideration, but they didn’t. For two days I was confined in a stinking wooden cage no bigger than a trunk, unable to stand or lie, but only to crouch painfully while I was exhibited in the temple square at Tang-chao to a jeering mob who spat and poked and shovelled ordure through the bars. I was given no food or drink beyond a filthy rag soaked in water, without which I’d have died – but I was in paradise compared with Parkes and Loch, who had survived only to be dragged to the Board of Punishments in Pekin.
The worst of it was not knowing. What would they do to me? Where were the others? What had happened at Five-li Point? The Manchoo thugs who guarded my cage, and egged on the mob to torment me, gloated about the terrible slaughter they’d inflicted on our army – which I knew was lies, for they couldn’t have licked Grant, and why wasn’t Tang-chao choked with prisoners like myself? But I didn’t know that in fact Grant had thrashed their ambush out of sight, with our cavalry driving twenty thousand Tartar horsemen pellmell, and even riding round the walls of Tang-chao before withdrawing to Grant’s new position at Chang-kia-wan. Nor could I guess that Elgin was furiously demanding our release – or that the Manchoos were refusing even to talk.
It beats belief, but those lordly idiots at the Imperial Court still wouldn’t accept the evidence of their senses. No, their army hadn’t been driven like sheep; no, it was impossible that the insolent barbarians could approach Pekin; no, it wasn’t happening at all. So they were telling each other, with Sang-kol-in-sen and Prince I spitting venom into the ear of their imbecilic Emperor, convincing the poor dupe that the sound of our guns twenty miles away was merely our last despairing gasp, and that presently we should be laid in the dust at his feet. They were ready to try to prove it, too, as you shall see.
I knew only from my guards that Pekin had proclaimed that we prisoners would be executed the moment our army advanced; I hadn’t heard, thank God, that Elgin’s reply was a flat defiance: he was coming to Pekin, and if a hair of our heads was hurt, God help the Emperor. Looking back now in safety, I can say he was right; if he’d weakened, those Manchoo idiots would have thought they’d won, and murdered us in sheer gloating exuberance, for that’s their style. But as long as he was coming on, with blood in his eye, they held their hands out of secret fear. And he was coming, the Big Barbarian, at the double and tugging his hair; even while I crouched in that hellish cage, and while they were dying by inches in the Board of Punishments, Grant was throwing aside his map and thrusting his sgian dhu into his boot, and Montauban was haranguing his poilus as they stuffed their cartridge-pouches. It was different, then; touch a Briton, and the lion roared once – and sprang.
They came like a whirlwind on the third day of our captivity, with a thundrous prelude of artillery that had me craning vainly at the thick wooden bars; the townsfolk scattered in panic to get out of the way as Chinese troops came pouring through the square, horse, foot and guns streaming through to the Pekin road. I was croaking with hope, expecting any moment to see the beards and puggarees and lance-heads galloping into view, when I was dragged from my cage and hauled before an armoured horseman. My cramped limbs wouldn’t answer at first, but when they lashed my wrists by a long rein to his crupper, and the swine set off up the street – well, it’s astonishing how you can hobble when you have to. I knew if I fell I’d be dragged and flayed to pieces, so I ran stumbling with my arms being half-torn from their sockets. Fortunately the road was so crowded with troops that he couldn’t go above a trot; we