George Fraser - Flash for Freedom!

‘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; when I asked him who the d---l he was he jerked his head in a nervous tic and stammered:

‘Please, sir, I’m Sammy.’

‘Sammy what?’

‘Nossir, please sir, Sammy Snivels, cap’n calls me. But they calls me Looney, mostly.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Please sir, it’s gruel. The doctor sez for you to eat it, please, sir,’ and he lumbered forward and spilled half of it over my cot.

‘D--n you!’ cries I, and weak and all as I was I caught him a back-handed swipe on the face that sent him half across the cabin. ‘Take your filth and get out!’

He mowed at me, and tried to scrape some of the stuff off the floor back into the bowl. ‘Doctor’ll thump me if you don’t take it, please, sir,’ says he, pushing it at me again. ‘Please, sir, it’s nice tack, an’ all – please, sir,’ and then he squealed as I lunged out at him, dropped the bowl, and fairly ran for it. I was too weak to do more than curse after him, but I promised myself that when I was better I would put myself in a better frame of mind by giving the blundering half-wit a thumping on my own account, to keep the doctor’s company.

Next man in was no half-wit, but a nimble little ferret of a ship’s boy with a loose lip and a cast in one eye. He gave me a shifty grin and sniffed at the spilled gruel.

‘Looney didn’t ’ave no luck, did ’e?’ says he. ‘I told ’em gruel wouldn’t go down, no’ow.’

I told him to go to blazes and leave me alone.

‘Feelin’ groggy, eh?’ says he, moving towards the bunk. ‘Grub’s no good ter you, mate. Tell yer wot; I’ll get in bed wiv yer for a shillin’.’

‘Get out, you dirty little b-----d,’ says I, for I knew his kind; Rugby had been crawling with ’em. ‘I’d sooner have your great-grandmother.’

‘Snooks!’ says he, putting out his tongue. ‘You’ll sing a different tune after three months at sea an’ not a wench in sight. It’ll be two bob then!’

I flung a pot at him, but missed, and he let fly a stream of the richest filth I’ve ever listened to. ‘I’ll get Mister Comber ter you, yer big black swine!’ he finished up. ‘’E’ll give you what for! Ta-ta!’ And with that he slipped out, thumbing his nose.

Mr Comber was the fourth of my new acquaintances. He was third mate, and shared the cabin with me, and I couldn’t make him out. He was civil, although he said little enough, but the odd thing was, he was a gentleman, and had obviously been to a good school. What a playing-field beauty like this was doing on a merchantman I couldn’t see, but I held my tongue and watched him. He was about my age, tall and fair-haired, and too sure of himself for me to get on the wrong side of. I guessed he was as puzzled about me as I was about him, but I was feeling too poorly at first to give much heed to him. He didn’t champion the cabin boy, by the way, so that worthy’s threat had obviously been bluff.