Flash for Freedom!. George Fraser MacDonald
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yes. French and German, Hindoostani, Pushtu – which is a tongue …’
‘… of Northern India,’ says he impatiently. ‘I know. Get on.’
‘Well, a little Malay, a little Danish. I learn languages easily.’
‘Aye. You were educated at Rugby – you have the classics?’
‘Well,’ says I, ‘I’ve forgotten a good deal …’
‘Hah! Hiatus maxime deflendus,’fn1 says this amazing fellow. ‘Or if you prefer it, Hiatus valde deflendus.’ He glared at me. ‘Well?’
I gaped at the man. ‘You mean? – oh, let’s see. Great – er, letting down? Great –’
‘Christ’s salvation!’ says he. ‘No wonder Arnold died young. The priceless gift of education, thrown away on brute minds! You speak living languages without difficulty, it seems – had you not the grace to pay heed, d--n your skin, to the only languages that matter?’ He jumped up and strode about.
I was getting tired of Mr Charity Spring. ‘They may matter to you,’ says I, ‘but in my experience it’s precious little good quoting Virgil to a head-hunter. And what the d---l has this to do with anything?’
He stood lowering at me, and then sneered: ‘There’s your educated Englishman, right enough. Gentlemen! Bah! Why do I waste breath on you? Quidquid praecipies, esto brevis,fn2 by God! Well, if you’ll pack your precious traps, Mr Flashman, we’ll be off. There’s a tide to catch.’ And he was away, bawling for my account at the stairhead.
It was obvious to me that I had fallen in with a lunatic, and possibly a dangerous one, but since in my experience a great many seamen are wanting in the head I wasn’t over-concerned. He paid not the slightest heed to anything I said as we made our way down to the jetty with my valise behind on a hand-cart, but occasionally he would bark a question at me, and it was this that eventually prodded me into recollecting one of the few Latin tags which has stuck in my mind – mainly because it was flogged into me at school as a punishment for talking in class. He had been demanding information about my Indian service, mighty offensively, too, so I snapped at him:
‘Percunctatorem fugitus nam garrulus idem est’,fn3 which I thought was pretty fair, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Horace, by G-d!’ he shouted. ‘We’ll make something of you yet. But it is fugito, d’ye see, not fugitus. Come on, man, make haste.’
He got little opportunity to catechise me after this, for the first stage of our journey was in a cockly little fishing boat that took us out into the Channel, and since it was h--lish rough I was in no condition for conversation. I’m an experienced sailor, which is to say I’ve heaved my guts over the rail into all the Seven Seas, and before we were ten minutes out I was sprawled in the scuppers wishing to God I’d gone back to London and faced the music. This spewing empty misery continued, as it always does, for hours, and I was still green and wobbly-kneed when at evening we came into a bay on the French coast, and sighted Mr Spring’s vessel riding at anchor. Gazing blearily at it as we approached, I was astonished at its size; it was long and lean and black, with three masts, not unlike the clippers of later years. As we came under her counter, I saw the lettering on her side: it read Balliol College.
‘Ah,’ says I to Spring, who was by me just then. ‘You were at Balliol, were you?’
‘No,’ says he, mighty short. ‘I am an Oriel man myself.’
‘Then why is your ship called Balliol College?’
I saw his teeth clench and his scar darkened up. ‘Because I hate the b----y place!’ he cried in passion. He took a turn about and came back to me. ‘My father and brothers were Balliol men, d’you see? Does that answer you, Mr Flashman?’
Well, it didn’t, but at that moment my belly revolted again, and when we came aboard I had to be helped up the ladder, retching and groaning and falling a-sprawl on the deck. I heard a voice say, ‘Christ, it’s Nelson’, and then I was half-carried away, and dropped on a bunk somewhere, alone in my misery while in the distance I heard the hateful voice of John Charity Spring bawling orders. I vowed then, as I’ve vowed fifty times since, that this was the last time I’d ever permit myself to be lured aboard a ship, but my mind must still have been working a little, because as I dropped off to sleep I remember wondering: why does a British ship have to sail from the French coast? But I was too tired and ill to worry just then.
Sometime later someone brought me broth, and having spewed it on to the floor I felt well enough to get up and stagger on deck. It was half-dark, but the stars were out, and to port there were lights twinkling on the French coast. I looked north, towards England, but there was nothing to be seen but grey sea, and suddenly I thought, my G-d, what am I doing here? Where the deuce am I going? Who is this man Spring? Here I was, who only a couple of weeks before had been rolling down to Wiltshire like a lord, with the intention of going into politics, and now I was shivering with sea-sickness on an ocean-going barque commanded by some kind of mad Oxford don – it was too much, and I found I was babbling to myself by the rail.
It’s always the way, of course. You’re coasting along and then the current grips you, and you’re swept into events and places that you couldn’t even have dreamed about. It seemed to have happened so quickly, but as I looked miserably back over the past fortnight there wasn’t, that I could see, anything I could have done that would have prevented what was now happening to me. I couldn’t have resisted Morrison, or refused Spring – I’d had to do what I was told, and here I was. I found myself blubbering as I gazed over the rail at the empty waste of sea – if only I hadn’t got lusty after that little b---h Fanny, and played cards with her, and hit that swine Bryant – ah, but what was the use? It was done, and I was going God knew where, and leaving Elspeth and my life of ease and drinking and guzzling and mounting women behind. But it was too bad, and I was full of self-pity and rage as I watched the water slipping past.
Of course, if I’d been like Jack Merry or Dick Champion, or any of the other plucky little prigs that Tom Brown and his cronies used to read about, setting off to seek my fortune on the bounding wave, I’d have brushed aside a manly tear and faced the future with the stout heart of youth, while old Bosun McHearty clapped me on the shoulder and held me enthralled with tales of the South Seas, and I would have gone to bed at last thinking of my mother and resolving to prove worthy of my resolute and Christian commander, Captain Freeman. (God knows how many young idiots have gone to sea after being fed that kind of lying pap in their nursery books.) Perhaps at twenty-six I was too old and hard-used, for instead of a manly tear I did another manly vomit, and in place of Bosun McHearty there came a rush of seamen tailing on a rope across the deck, hurling me aside with a cry of ‘Stand from under, you --- farmer!’, while from the dark above me my Christian commander bellowed at me to get below and not hinder work. So I went, and fell asleep thinking not of my mother, or of the credit I’d bring my family, but of the chance I’d missed in not rogering Fanny Locke that afternoon at Roundway Down. Aye, the vain regrets of youth.
You will judge from this that I wasn’t cut out for the life on the ocean wave. I can’t deny it; if Captain Marryat had had to write about me he’d have burned his pen, signed on a Cardiff tramp, and been buried at sea. For one thing, in my first few days aboard I did not thrash the ship’s bully, make friends with the nigger cook, or learn how to gammon a bosprit from a leathery old salt who called me a likely lad. No, I spent those days in my bunk feeling d----d ill, and only crawling on deck occasionally to take the air and quickly scurry below again to my berth. I was a sea-green and corruptible Flashy in those days.
Nor did I make friends, for I saw only four people and disliked all of them. The first was the ship’s doctor, a big-bellied lout of an Irishman who looked as though he’d be more at home with a bottle than a lancet, and had cold, clammy hands. He gave me a draught for my sea-sickness which made it worse, and then staggered away to be ill himself. He was followed by a queer, old-young creature with wispy hair who shuffled in carrying a bowl from which he slopped some evil-looking muck;