George Fraser - Flash for Freedom!

What that was I discovered on the eighth day, when a man called to see me just as I was finishing breakfast. In fact, I had finished, and was just chivvying after the servant lass who had come to clear away the dishes from my room; I had chased her into a corner, and she was bleating that she was a good girl, which I’ll swear she wasn’t, when the knock sounded; she took advantage of it to escape, admitting the visitor while she straightened her cap and snapped her indignation at me.

‘Sauce!’ says she. ‘I never –’

‘Get out,’ says the newcomer, and she took one look at him and fled.

He kicked the door to with his heel and stood looking at me, and there was something in that look that made me bite back the d--n-your-eyes I’d been going to give him for issuing orders in my room. At first glance he was ordinary-looking enough; square built, middle height, plain trousers and tight-buttoned jacket with his hands thrust into the pockets, low-crowned round hat which he didn’t trouble to remove, and stiff-trimmed beard and moustache which gave him a powerful, business-like air. But it wasn’t that that stopped me: it was the man’s eyes. They were as pale as water in a china dish, bright and yet empty, and as cold as an ice floe. They were wide set in his brown, hook-nosed face, and they looked at you with a blind fathomless stare that told you here was a terrible man. Above them, on his brow, there was a puckered scar that ran from side and side and sometimes jerked as he talked; when he was enraged, as he often was, it turned red. Hollo, thinks I, here’s another in my gallery of happy acquaintances.

‘Mr Flashman?’ says he. He had an odd, husky voice with what sounded like a trace of North Country. ‘My name is John Charity Spring.’

It seemed d----d inappropriate to me, but he was evidently well enough pleased with it, for he sat himself down in a chair and nodded me to another. ‘We’ll waste no time, if you please,’ says he. ‘I’m under instructions from my owner to take you aboard my vessel as supercargo. You don’t know what that means, I daresay, and it’s not necessary that you should. I know why you’re shipping with me; you’ll perform such duties as I suppose to be within your power. Am I clear?’

‘Well,’ says I, ‘I don’t know about that. I don’t think I care for your tone, Mr Spring, and –’

‘Captain Spring,’ says he, and sat forward. ‘Now see here, Mr Flashman, I don’t beat about. You’re nothing to me; I gather you’ve half-killed someone and that you’re a short leap ahead of the law. I’m to give you passage out, on the instructions of Mr Morrison.’ Suddenly his voice rose to a shout, and he crashed his hand on the table. ‘Well, I don’t give a d--n! You can stay or run, d’ye see? It’s all one to me! But you don’t waste my time!’ The scar on his head was crimson, and then it faded and his voice dropped. ‘Well?’

I didn’t like the look of this one, I can tell you. But what could I do?

‘Well,’ says I, ‘you say Mr Morrison is your ship’s owner – I didn’t know he had ships.’

‘Part owner,’ says he. ‘One of my directors.’

‘I see. And where is your ship bound, Captain Spring, and where are you to take me?’

The pale eyes flickered. ‘We’re going foreign,’ says he. ‘America, and home again. The voyage may last six months, so by Christmas you’ll be back in England. As supercargo you take a share of profit – a small share – so your voyage won’t be wasted.’

‘What’s the cargo?’ says I, interested, because I remembered hearing that these short-haul traders on the Atlantic run did quite well.

‘General stuffs on the way out – Brummagem, cloths, some machinery. Cotton, sugar, molasses and so forth on the trip home.’ He snapped the words out. ‘You ask too d----d many questions, Mr Flashman, for a runner.’

‘I’m not all that much of a runner,’ says I. It didn’t sound too bad a way of putting by the time till the Bryant business was past. ‘Well, in that case, I suppose –’

‘Good,’ says he. ‘Now then: I know you’re an Army officer, and it’s in deference to that I’m making you supercargo, which means you mess aft. You’ve been in India, for what that’s worth – what d’you know of the sea?’

‘Little enough,’ says I. ‘I’ve voyaged out and home, but I sailed in Borneo waters with Rajah Brooke, and can handle a small boat.’

‘Did you now?’ The pale eyes gleamed. ‘That means you’ve been part-pirate, I daresay. You look like it – hold your tongue, sir, it doesn’t matter to me! I’ll only tell you this: on my ship there is no free-and-easy sky-larking! I saw that slut in here just now – well, henceforth you’ll fornicate when I give you leave! By God, I’ll not have it otherwise!’ He was shouting again; this fellow’s half-mad, thinks I. Then he was quiet. ‘You have languages, I understand?’

‘Why, 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 ,’ fn1says 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 , fn2by 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 ’, fn3which 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 .