Flash for Freedom!

‘I know, sir,’ says Comber, sticking to his guns nervously. ‘But forty dead gives you the same loss, and …’

‘D--nation take you, will you dispute with me?’ Spring’s eyes were blazing. ‘I was shipping black pigs while you were hanging at your mother’s teat – where you ought to be this minute! D’ye think I don’t take as much thought to have ’em hale and happy as you, you impudent pup! And for a better reason – I don’t get paid for flinging corpses overboard. It’s dollars I’m saving, not souls, Mr Comber! Heaven help me, I don’t know why you’re in this business – you ought to be in the b----y Board of Trade!’ He sat glaring at Comber, who was silent, and then turned to the others. ‘Fifteen and twelve, gentlemen, is that clear?’

Kinnie sighed. ‘Very good, cap’n. You know my views, and …’

‘I do, Mr Kinnie, and I respect them. They are grounded in experience and commercial sense, not in humanitarian claptrap picked up from scoundrels like Tappan and Garrison. The Genius of Universal Emancipation, eh, Mr Comber?18 You’ll be quoting to me in a moment. Genius of Ill-digested Crap! Don’t contradict me, sir; I know your views – which is why I’m at a loss to understand your following this calling, you d---d hypocrite, you!’

Comber sat silent, and Spring went on: ‘You will take personal responsibility for the welfare of the females, Mr Comber. And they won’t die, sir! We shall see to that. No, they won’t die, because like you – and Mr Flashman yonder – they haven’t read Seneca, so they don’t know that qui mori didicit servire dedidicit.fn1 If they did, we’d be out of business in a week.’

I must say it sounded good sense to me, and Comber sat mumchance. He was obviously thankful when the discussion turned to more immediate matters, like the arrival of King Gezo the next day at Apokoto, which lay some miles upriver; Spring wanted to meet him for a palaver, and said that Kinnie and Comber and I should come along, with a dozen of the hands, while Sullivan began packing the first slaves who would be arriving at the barracoons.

I was all in favour of getting off the Balliol College for a few hours, but when we boarded the Kroos’ big canoe at the bank next day, I wasn’t so sure. Kinnie was distributing arms to the hands, a carbine and cutlass for each man, and Spring himself took me aside and presented me with a very long-barrelled pistol.

‘You know these?’ says he, and I told him I did – it was one of the early Colt revolvers, the type you loaded with powder and ball down the muzzle. Very crude they’d look today, but they were the wonder of the world then.

‘I picked up a dozen of these last winter in Baltimore,’ says he. ‘American army guns – Gezo would give his very throne for ’em, and I intend to use them in driving a very special bargain with him. Are you a good shot? Well, then, you can demonstrate them for him. Get Kinnie to give you a needle gun and cutlass as well.’19

‘D’you think … we’ll need them?’ says I.

He turned the pale eyes on me. ‘Would you rather go unarmed – into the presence of the most bloodthirsty savage in West Africa?’ says he. ‘No, Mr Flashman – I don’t expect we shall need to use our weapons; not for a moment. But I fear the Greeks even when I’m bearing gifts to ’em, sir, d’you see?’

Well, that was sense, no doubt of it, so I took my needle carbine and bandolier, buckled on the cutlass and stuck the Colt in my belt, and stood forth like Pirate Bill; as we took our places in the canoe, it looked like something from a pantomime, every man with his hankie knotted round his head, armed to the teeth, some of ’em with rings in their ears, and one even with a patch over his eye. It struck me – what would Arnold say if he could look down now from his place at the right hand of God? Why, there, he would say, is that worthy lad, Tom Brown, with his milk-and-water wife in the West Country, giving bread and blankets to needy villagers who knuckle their heads and call him ‘squire’: good for you, Brown. And there, too, that noble boy Scud East, lording it over the sepoys for the glory of God and the profit of John Company – how eminently satisfactory! And young Brooke, too, a fearless lieutenant aboard his uncle’s frigate Unspeakable – what a credit to his old school! Aye, as the twigs are bent so doth the trees grow. But who is this, consorting with pirates and preparing to ship hapless niggers into slavery, with oaths on his lips? I might have known – it is the degraded Flashman! Unhappy youth! But just what I might have expected!

Aye, he would have rejoiced at the sight – if there’s one thing he and his hypocritical kind loved better than seeing virtue rewarded, it was watching a black sheep going to the bad. The worst of it is, I wasn’t there of my own free will – not that you ever get credit for that.

These philosophical musings were disturbed by the tender scene between Mr and Mrs Spring as he prepared to board the canoe. Unlike the rest of us, he was dressed as usual – dark jacket, round hat, neck-cloth all trim – how the devil he stood it, in that steaming heat, I can’t figure. Well, at the last minute, Mrs Spring leans over the ship’s side crying to him to take his comforter ‘against the chill of the night’. This in a country where the nights are boiling hot, mark you.

‘D--nation!’ mutters Spring, but out he climbed, and took the muffler, crying goodbye, my dear, goodbye, while the men in the canoe grinned and looked the other way. He was in a fine temper as we shoved off, kicking the backside of the cabin boy – who had been ordered to come along – and d--ning the eyes of the man at the tiller.

Just as we pushed out into mid-stream came another diversion – from the jungle on the landward side of the stockade came a distant murmuring and confused sound. As it grew nearer you could hear that it was a great shuffling and moaning, with the occasional shout and crack of a whip, and a dull chanting in cadence behind it.

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