Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 3: Flashman at the Charge, Flashman in the Great Game, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord. George Fraser MacDonald
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says I. “But if you’re thinking of pinching a boat, you’re mad –”
“Boat nothing,” says he. “What d’ye see in the sea, south of Yenitchi?”
“A streak of fly-dung,” says I, impatiently. “Now, Scud –”
“That’s what it looks like,” says he triumphantly. “But it ain’t. That, my boy, is the Arrow of Arabat – a causeway, not more than half a mile across, without even a road on it, that runs from Yenitchi a clear sixty miles through the sea of Azov to Arabat in the Crimea – and from there it’s a bare hundred miles across to Sevastopol! Don’t you see, man? No one ever uses it, according to this book, except a few dromedary caravans in summer. Why, the Russians hardly know it exists, even! All we need is one night of snow, here, to cover our traces, and while they’re chasing us towards the isthmus, we’re tearing down to Yenitchi, along the causeway to Arabat, and then westward ho to Sevastopol –”
“Through the bloody Russian army!” cries I.
“Through whoever you please! Can’t you see – no one will be looking for us there! They’ve no telegraph, anyway, in this benighted country – we both speak enough Russian to pass! Heavens, we speak it better than most moujiks, I’ll swear. It’s the way, Flashman – the only way!”
I didn’t like this one bit. Don’t misunderstand me – I’m as true-blue a Briton as the next man, and I’m not unwilling to serve the old place in return for my pay, provided it don’t entail too much discomfort or expense. But I draw the line where my hide is concerned – among the many things I’m not prepared to do for my country is die, especially at the end of a rope trailing from a Cossack’s saddle, or with his lance up my innards. The thought of abandoning this snug retreat, where I was feeding full, drinking well, and rogering my captivity happily away, and going careering off through the snow-fast Russian wilderness, with those devils howling after me – and all so that we could report this crazy scheme to Raglan! It was mad. Anyway, what did I care for India? I’d sooner we had it than the Russians, of course, and if the intelligence could have been conveyed safely to Raglan (who’d have promptly forgotten it, or sent an army to Greenland by mistake, like as not) I’d have done it like a shot. But I draw the line at risks that aren’t necessary to my own well-being. That’s why I’m eighty years old today, while Scud East has been mouldering underground at Cawnpore this forty-odd years.
But I couldn’t say this to him, of course. So I looked profound, and anxious, and shook my head. “Can’t be done, Scud. Look now; you don’t know much about this Arrow causeway, except what’s in that book. Who’s to say it’s open in winter – or that it’s still there? Might have been washed away. Who knows what guards they may have at either end? How do we get through the Crimea to Sevastopol? I’ve done a bit of travelling in disguise, you know, in Afghanistan and Germany … and, oh, lots of places, and it’s a sight harder than you’d think. And in Russia – where everyone has to show his damned ticket every few miles – we’d never manage it. But” – I stilled his protest with a stern finger – “I’d chance that, of course, if it wasn’t an absolute certainty that we’d be nabbed before we’d got halfway to this Yenitchi place. Even if we got clear away from here – which would be next to impossible – they would ride us down in few hours. It’s hopeless, you see.”
“I know that!” he cried. “I can count, too! But I tell you we’ve got to try! It’s a chance in a million that we’ve found out this infernal piece of Russian treachery! We must try to use it, to warn Raglan and the people at home! What have we got to lose, except our lives?”
D’you know, when a man talks like that to me, I feel downright insulted. Why other, unnamed lives, or the East India Company’s dividend, or the credit of Lord Aberdeen, or the honour of British arms, should be held by me to be of greater consequence than my own shrinking skin, I’ve always been at a loss to understand.
“You’re missing the point,” I told him. “Of course, one doesn’t think twice about one’s neck when it’s a question of duty” – I don’t, anyway – “but one has to be sure where one’s duty lies. Maybe I’ve seen more rough work than you have, Scud, and I’ve learned there’s no point in suicide – not when one can wait and watch and think. If we sit tight, who knows what chance may arise that ain’t apparent now? But if we go off half-cock, and get killed or something – well, that won’t get the news to Raglan. Here’s something: now that Ignatieff don’t need us any more, they may even exchange us. Then the laugh would be on them, eh?”
At this he cried out that time was vital, and we daren’t wait. I replied that we daren’t go until we saw a reasonable chance (if I knew anything, we’d wait a long time for one), and so we bandied it to and fro and got no forrarder, and finally went to bed, played out.
When I thought the thing over, alone (and got into a fine sweat at the recollection of the fearful risk we’d run, crouching in that musty gallery) I could see East’s point. Here we were, by an amazing fluke, in possession of information which any decent soldier would have gone through hell to get to his chiefs. And Scud East was a decent soldier, by anyone’s lights but mine. My task, plainly, was to prevent his doing anything rash – in other words, anything at all – and yet appear to be in as big a sweat as he was himself. Not too difficult, for one of my talents.
In the next few days we mulled over a dozen notions for escaping, each more lunatic than the last. It was quite interesting, really, to see at what point in some particular idiocy poor Scud would start to boggle; I remember the look of respectful horror which crept into his eyes when I regretted absently that we hadn’t dropped from the gallery that night and cut all their throats, the Tsar’s included – “too late, now, of course, since they’ve all gone,” says I. “Pity, though; if we’d finished ’em off, that would have scotched their little scheme. And I haven’t had a decent set-to since Balaclava. Aye, well.”
Scud began to worry me, though; he was working himself up into a fever of anxiety and impatience where he might do something foolish. “We must try!” he kept insisting. “If we can think of no alternative soon, we’re bound to make a run for it some night! I’ll go mad if we don’t, I tell you! How can you just sit there? – oh, no, I’m sorry, Flashman; I know this must be torturing you too! Forgive me, old fellow. I haven’t got your steady nerve.”
He hadn’t got Valla to refresh him, either, which might have had a calming effect. I thought of suggesting that he take a steam-bath with Aunt Sara, to settle his nerves, but he might have enjoyed it too much, and then gone mad repenting. So I tried to look anxious and frustrated, while he chewed his nails and fretted horribly, and a week passed, in which he must have lost a stone. Worrying about India, stab me. And then the worst happened: we got our opportunity, and in circumstances which even I couldn’t refuse.
It came after a day in which Pencherjevsky lost his temper, a rare thing, and most memorable. I was in the salon when I heard him bawling at the front door, and came out to find him standing in the hallway, fulminating at two fellows outside on the steps. One looked like a clergyman; the other was a lean, ugly little fellow dressed like a clerk.
“… effrontery, to seek to thrust yourself between me and my people!” Pencherjevsky was roaring. “Merciful God, how do I keep my hands from you? Have you no souls to cure, you priest fellow, and you, Blank, no pen-pushing or pimping to occupy you? Ah, but no – you have your agitating, have you not, you seditious scum! Well, agitate elsewhere, before I have my Cossacks take their whips to you! Get out of my sight and off my land – both of you!”
He was grotesque in his rage, towering like some bearded old-world god – I’d have been in the next county before him, but these two stood their ground, jeopardizing their health.
“We are no serfs of yours!” cries the fellow Blank. “You do not order us,” and Pencherjevsky gave a strangled roar and started forward, but the priest came between.
“Lord Count! A moment!” He was game, that one. “Hear me, I implore. You are a just man, and surely it is little enough to ask. The woman is old, and if she cannot