Flashman at the Charge

Part two of a new adventure satire

Synopsis: The fourth packet of the Flashman Papers (1854--1855) picks up the memoirs of the celebrated soldier as England is moving towards war with Russia. Captain Flashman---a public hero of the Afghanistan compaign but, as he reveals, a private coward---seeks to avoid the coming storm by joining the Board of Ordnance in London. His private life is a bit unsettled by the fact that he happens to catch the Earl of Cardigan---soon to command the Light Cavalry Brigade in the Crimea---about to climb into bed with the beautiful but foolish Mrs. Flashman.

In another development, Flashman finds himself promoted to the rank of colonel and ordered to active service as an aide and guardian to the young Prince William of Celle, a German relative of Queen Victoria. This assignment comes to a tragic end when, at the Battle of the Alma, the young prince charges ahead and Flashman lags behind. Flashman then, as an aide and galloper on General Lord Raglan's staff, to his overwhelming horror, gets involved in the charge of the Light Brigade. He was, in fact, somewhat to blame for its starting off in the wrong direction; having drunk some Russian champagne, he is bloated. His booming flatulence annoys Cardigan to the point of giving the order to charge, with Flashman, terrorstruck, in the van.

Suddenly it was, as Lord Tennyson tells us, like the very mouth of hell; I realized that, without noticing, I had started to canter, babbling gently to myself, and in front Cardigan was cantering, too, but not as fast as I was (one celebrated account remarks that, ''in his eagerness to be first at grips with the foe, Flashman was seen to forge ahead; ah, we can guess the fierce spirit that burned in that manly breast''---I don't know about that, but I'm here to inform you that it was nothing to the fierce spirit that burned in my manly bowels). There was a crash-crash-crash of flaming bursts across the front and the scream of shell splinters whistling by; Cardigan shouted, ''Steady!'' but his own charger was pacing away now, and behind me the clatter and jingle was being drowned by the rising drum of hooves, from a slow canter to a fast one, and then to a slow gallop, and I tried to rein in that little mare, smothering my own panic and snarling fiercely to myself: ''Wheel, wheel, for God's sake! Why doesn't the stupid bastard wheel?'' For we were level with the first Russian redoubt; their guns were levelled straight at us, not 400 yards away, the ground ahead was being torn up by shot, and then from behind me there was a frantic shout.

I turned in the saddle, and there was Nolan, his sabre out, charging across behind me, shouting hoarsely, ''Wheel, my lord! Not that way! Wheel---to the redoubts!'' His voice was all but drowned in the tumult of explosion, and then he was streaking past Cardigan, reining his beast back on its haunches, his face livid as he turned to face the brigade. He flourished his sabre and shouted again, and a shell seemed to explode dead in front of Cardigan's horse; for a moment I lost Nolan in the smoke, and then I saw him, face contorted in agony, his tunic torn open and gushing blood from shoulder to waist. He shrieked horribly and his horse came bounding back towards us, swerving past Cardigan with Lew toppling forward onto the neck of his mount. As I stared back, horrified, I saw him careering into the gap between the lancers and the 13th Light, and then they had swallowed him and the squadrons came surging down towards me.

I turned to look for Cardigan; he was 30 yards ahead, tugging like damnation to hold his charger in, with the shot crashing all about him. ''Stop!'' I screamed. ''Stop! For Christ's sake, man, rein in!'' For now I saw what Lew had seen---the fool was never going to wheel, he was taking the Light Brigade straight into the heart of the Russian army, towards those massive batteries at the valley foot which were already belching at us, while the cannon on either side were raking us from the flanks, trapping us in an enfilade that must smash the whole command to pieces.

Then the earth seemed to open beneath me in a sheet of orange flame; I reeled in the saddle, deafened; the horse staggered, went down and recovered, with myself clinging for dear life, and then I was grasping nothing but loose reins. The bridle was half gone, my brute had a livid gash spouting blood along her neck; she screamed and hurtled madly forward and I seized the mane to prevent myself being thrown from the saddle.

Suddenly I was level with Cardigan; we bawled at each other, he waving his sabre, and now there were blue tunics level with me, either side, and the lance points of the 17th were thrusting forward, with the men crouched low in the saddles. It was an inferno of bursting shell and whistling fragments, of orange flame and choking smoke; a trooper alongside me was plucked from his saddle as though by an invisible hand and I found myself drenched in a shower of blood. My little mare went surging ahead, crazy with pain; we were outdistancing Cardigan now---and even in that hell of death and gunfire, I remember, my stomach was asserting itself again, and I rode yelling with panic and farting furiously at the same time. I couldn't hold my horse at all: It was all I could do to stay aboard as we raced onwards, and as I stared wildly ahead, I saw that we were a bare few hundred yards from the Russian batteries. The great black muzzles were staring me in the face, smoke wreathing up round them; but even as I saw the flame belching from them, I couldn't hear the crash of their discharge---it was all lost in the fearful continuous reverberating cannonade that surrounded us. There was no stopping my mad career and I found myself roaring pleas for mercy to the distant Russian gunners, crying, stop, stop, for God's sake, cease fire, damn you, and let me alone. I could see them plainly, crouching at their breeches, working furiously to reload and pour another torrent of death at us through the smoke; I raged and swore mindlessly at them and dragged out my sabre, thinking, by heaven, if you finish me, I'll do my damnedest to take one of you with me, you filthy Russian scum. (''And then,'' wrote that fatuous ass of a correspondent, ''was seen with what nobility and power the gallant Flashman rode. Charging ahead even of his valiant chief, the death cry of the illustrious Nolan in his ears, his eyes flashing terribly as he swung the sabre that had stemmed the horde at Jalalabad, he hurtled against the foe.'') Well, yes, you might put it that way, but my nobility and power were concentrated, in a moment of inspiration, in trying to swerve that maddened beast out of the fixed lines of the guns; I had just sense enough left for that. The ground shook beneath us with another exploding shell, knocking us sideways; I clung on, sobbing, and as the smoke cleared, Cardigan came thundering by, sabre thrust out ahead of his charger's ears, and I heard him hoarsely shouting:

''Steady them! Hold them in! Cwose up and hold in!''

I turned in the saddle and, my God, what a sight it was! Half a dozen riderless horses at my very tail, crazy with fear, and behind them a score---God knows, there didn't seem to be any more---of the 17th Lancers, some with hats gone, some streaked with blood, strung out any old how, glaring like madmen and tearing along. Empty saddles, shattered squadrons, all order gone, men and beasts going down by the second, the ground furrowing and spouting earth even as you watched---and still they came on, the lances of the 17th, and behind them the sabres of the 11th---just a fleeting instant's thought I had, even in that inferno, remembering the brilliant Cherrypickers in splendid review, and there they were, tearing forward like a horde of hell-bound spectres.

I had only a moment to look back---my mare was galloping like a thing demented, and as I steadied, there was Cardigan, waving his sabre and sitting rigid and upright; the guns were only 100 yards away, almost hidden in a great billowing bank of smoke, a bank which kept glaring red as though some Lucifer were opening furnace doors deep inside it. I dug in my heels, yelling nonsense and brandishing my sabre, shot into the smoke with one final rip from my bowels and a prayer that my gallant little mare wouldn't career headlong into a gun muzzle, staggered at the fearful concussion of a gun exploding within a yard of me---and then we were through, into the open space behind the guns, leaping the limbers and ammunition boxes, with the Russians scattering, and Cardigan a bare two yards away, reining his beast back almost on its haunches.

And then for a moment everything seemed to happen very slowly. I can see it all so distinctly: Immediately to my left, and close enough to toss a biscuit, there was a squadron of Cossacks, with their lances couched, but all immobile, staring as though in amazement. Almost under my mare's hooves, there was a Russian gunner, clutching a rammer, sprawling to get out of the way---he was stripped to the waist, I remember, and had a medal round his neck on a string---ahead of me, perhaps 50 yards off, was a brilliant little group of mounted men who could only be staff officers, and right beside me, still stiff and upright as a lance at rest, was Cardigan---by God, I thought, you're through that without a scratch on you, damn you! And so, it crossed my mind, was I---for the moment. And then everything jerked into crazy speed again, as the Light Brigade came careering out of the smoke, and the whole battery was suddenly a melee of rearing beasts, (continued on page 200) Flashman At The Charge (continued from page 160) yelling maniacs, cracking pieces and flashing steel.

It was as though they had gone mad---which, in a sense, they had: They slashed those Russian gun crews apart, sabring, lancing, pounding them down underhoof---I saw a corporal of the 17th drive his lance point four feet through a gunner's body and then leap from the saddle to tear at the fellow with his hands, Cardigan exchanging cuts with a mounted officer, troopers wrestling with Cossacks in the saddle, one of our hussars on foot, whirling his sabre round his head and driving into a crowd of half a dozen, a Russian with his arm off at the elbow and a trooper still sabring him about the head---and then a Cossack came lumbering at me, roaring, with his lance couched to drive me through, but he was a handless clown and missed me by a yard. I howled and slashed him backhanded as he blundered by, and then I was buffeted clean out of the saddle and went rolling away, weaponless, beneath a gun limber.

If I hadn't been scared witless, I dare say I'd have stayed where I was, meditating, getting rid of some more wind and generally taking a detached view; but in my panic, I came scurrying out again, and there was George Paget, of all people, leaning from his saddle to grab my arm and swing me towards a riderless horse. I scrambled up and George shouted:

''Come on, Flash, you old savage---we can't lose you! I'll want another of your cheroots presently! Close here, Fourth Lights!''

There was a swirl of troopers round us, glaring smoke-blackened, bloody faces, a volley of commands, someone thrust a sabre into my hand and George was crying:

''What a bloody pickle! We must cut our way home! Follow me!'' and off we pounded, gasping and blinded, at his heels. I must have been near stupid with panic, for all I could think was: One more rush, just one more, and we'll be out of this hellhole and back into the valley.

''Halt!'' bawls George, and I thought, I don't care, this is one gallant cavalryman who isn't halting for anything, I've had enough, and if I'm the only man who goes streaking back up that valley, leaving his comrades in the lurch, to hell with it. I put my head down and my heels in, thrust out my sabre to discourage any fool who got in the way and charged ahead for all I was worth.

I heard George bawling behind me: ''Halt! No, Flash, no!'' and thought, carry on. George, and be damned to you. I fairly flew over the turf, the shouting died behind me and I raised my head and looked---straight at what appeared to be the entire Russian army, drawn up in review order. There were great hideous ranks of the brutes, with Cossacks dead ahead, not 20 yards off---I had only a fleeting glimpse of amazed, bearded faces, there wasn't a hope of stopping, and then with a blasphemous yell of despair. I plunged into them, horse, sabre and all.

''Picture, if you can bear it, reader''---as that idiot journalist put it---''the agony of Lord George Paget and his gallant remnant, in that moment. They had fought like heroes in the battery, Lord George himself had plucked the noble Flashman from bloody hand-to-hand conflict, they had rallied and ridden on through the battery. Lord George had given the halt, preparatory to wheeling about and charging back into the battery and the valley beyond, where ultimate safety lay---picture, then, their anguish, when that great heart, too full to think of safety or of aught but the cruel destruction of so many of his comrades, chose instead to launch himself alone against the embattled ranks of Muscovy!''

Well, I've always said, if you get the press on your side, you're halfway there. I've never bothered to correct that glowing tribute, until now; it seems almost a shame to do it at last. I don't remember which journal it appeared in---Bell's Sporting Chronicle, for all I know---but I don't doubt it caused many a manly tear to start and many a fair bosom to heave when they read it. In the meantime, I was doing a bit in the manly-tear-and-bosom-heaving line myself, with my horse foundering under me, my sabre flying from my hand and my sorely tried carcass sprawling on the turf while all those peasant horsemen shied back, growling and gaping, and then closed in again, staring down at me in that dull, astonished way that Russians have. I just lay there, gasping like a salmon on the bank, waiting for the lance points to come skewering down on me and babbling weakly:

''Kamerad! Ami! Sathi! Amigo! Oh, God, what's the Russian for friend?''

• • •

Being a prisoner of war has its advantages, or used to. If you were a British officer, taken by a civilized foe, you could expect to be rather better treated than your adversary would treat his own people; he would use you as a guest, entertain you, be friendly and not bother overmuch about confining you. He might ask your parole not to try to escape, but not usually: Since you would be exchanged for one of his own people at the first opportunity, there wasn't much point in running off.

At all events, no one has ever treated me better, by and large, than the Russians did, although I don't think it was kindness but ignorance. From the moment I measured my length among those Cossacks, I found myself being regarded with something like awe. It wasn't just the Light Brigade fiasco, which had impressed them tremendously, but a genuine uncertainty where the English were concerned---they seemed to look on us as though we were men from the moon or made of dynamite and so liable to go off if scratched. The truth is, they're such a dull, wary lot of peasants---the ordinary folk and soldiers, that is---that they fear anything strange until someone tells 'em what to do about it.

They stuck me in a tent, with two massive Cossacks at the entrance---Black Sea Cossacks, as I learned later, with those stringy long-haired caps and scarlet lances---and there I sat, listening to the growing chatter outside, and every now and then an officer would stick his face in and regard me and then withdraw. I was still feeling fearfully sick and giddy and my right ear seemed to have gone deaf with the cannonading, but as I leaned against the pole, shuddering, one thought kept crowding gloriously into my mind: I was alive and in one piece. I'd survived, God knew how, the shattering of the Light Brigade. That being the case, head up, look alive and keep your eyes open.

Presently, in came a little dapper chap in a fine white uniform, black boots and a helmet with a crowned eagle. ''Lanskey,'' says he, in good French---which most educated Russians spoke, by the way---''major, Cuirassiers of the Guard. Whom have I the pleasure of addressing?''

''Flashman,'' says I, ''colonel, Seventeenth Lancers.''

''Enchanted,'' says he, bowing. ''May I request that you accompany me to General Liprandi, who is most anxious to make the acquaintance of such a distinguished and gallant officer?''

Well, he couldn't have said fairer; I bucked up at once and he led me out, through a curious throng of officers and staff hangers-on, into a great tent where about a dozen senior officers were waiting, with a genial-looking, darkmoustachioed fellow in a splendid sable coat, whom I took to be Liprandi, seated behind a table. They stopped talking at once; a dozen pairs of eager eyes fixed on me as Lanskey presented me, and I stood up tall, ragged and muck-smeared and just stared over Liprandi's head, clicking my heels.

He came round the table, right up to me, and said, in excellent English: ''Your pardon, Colonel. Permit me.'' And to my astonishment, he stuck his nose up close to my lips, sniffing.

''What the devil?'' cries I, stepping back.

''A thousand pardons, sir,'' says he. ''It is true, gentlemen,'' turning to his staff. ''Not a suspicion of liquor.'' And they all began to buzz again, staring at me.

''You are perfectly sober,'' says Liprandi. ''And so, as I have ascertained, are your troopers who have been taken prisoner. I confess, I am astonished. Will you perhaps enlighten us, Colonel, what was the explanation of that . . . that extraordinary action by your light cavalry an hour ago? Believe me,'' he went on, ''I seek no military intelligence from you---no advantage of information. But it is beyond precedent---beyond understanding. Why, in God's name, did you do it?''

Now, I didn't know, at that time, precisely what we had done. I guessed we must have lost three quarters of the Light Brigade, by a hideous mistake, but I couldn't know that I'd just taken part in the most famous cavalry action ever fought, one that was to sound round the world and that even eyewitnesses could scarcely believe. The Russians were amazed; it seemed to them we must have been drunk or drugged or mad---they weren't to guess that it had been a ghastly accident. And I wasn't going to enlighten them. So I said: ''Ah, well, you know, it was just to teach you fellows to keep your distance.''

At this they exclaimed and shook their heads and swore, and Liprandi looked bewildered and kept muttering: ''Five hundred sabres! To what end?'' And they crowded round, plying me with questions---all very friendly, mind, so that I began to get my bounce back and played it off as though it were just another day's work. What they couldn't fathom was how we'd held together all the way to the guns and hadn't broken or turned back, even with four saddles empty out of five, so I just told 'em, ''We're British cavalry,'' simple as that, and looked them in the eye. It was true, too, even if no one had less right to say it than I.

At that they stamped and swore again, incredulously, and one huge chap with a beard began to weep and insisted on embracing me, stinking of garlic as he was, and Liprandi called for vodka and demanded of me what we, in English, called our light cavalry, and when I told him, they all raised their glasses and shouted together: ''Thee Light Brigedde!'' and dashed down their glasses and ground them underfoot and embraced me again, laughing and shouting and patting me on the head, while I, the unworthy recipient, looked pretty bluff and offhand and said, no, dammit all, it was nothing, just our usual form, don't you know. (I should have felt shame, doubtless, at the thought that I, old windy Harry, was getting the plaudits and the glory, but you know me. Anyway, I'd been there, hadn't I, all the way; should I be disqualified, just because I was babbling scared?)

After that it was all booze and good fellowship, and when I'd been washed and given a change of clothes. Liprandi gave me a slap-up dinner with his staff and the champagne flowed---French, you may be certain; these Russian officers know how to go to war---and they were all full of attention and admiration and a thousand questions, but every now and then they would fall silent and look at me in that strange way that every survivor of the charge has come to recognize: respectfully, and almost with reverence, but with a hint of suspicion, as though you weren't quite canny.

They didn't exchange me. They kept me for a couple of weeks, confined in a cottage at Yalta, with two musketmen on the door and a Russian colonel of Horse Pioneers to walk the little garden with me for exercise, and then I was visited by Radzivill, a very decent chap on Liprandi's staff who spoke English and knew London well. He was terribly apologetic, explaining that there wasn't a suitable exchange, since I was a staff man and a pretty rare catch. I didn't believe this; we'd taken senior Russian officers every bit as important as I, at the Alma, and I wondered exactly why they wanted to keep me prisoner, but there was no way of finding out, of course. Not that it concerned me much---I didn't mind a holiday in Russia, being treated as an honoured guest rather than a prisoner, for Radzivill hastened to reassure me that what they intended to do was send me across the Crimea to Kertch, and then by boat to mainland Russia, where I'd be safely tucked away on a country estate. The advantage of this was that I would be so far out of harm's way that escape would be impossible---I tried to look serious and knowing when he said this, as though I'd been contemplating running off to rejoin the bloody battle again---and I could lead a nice easy life without overmany restrictions, until the war was over, which couldn't be long.

I've learned to make the best of things, so I accepted without demur, packed up my few traps, which consisted of my cleaned and mended lancer blues and a few shirts and things which Radzivill gave me, and prepared to go where I was taken. I was quite looking forward to it---fool that I was.

• • •

The journey from Yalta through the woody hills to Kertch was not noteworthy; once you've seen a corner of the Crimea you've seen it all, and it's not really Russia. From Kertch, where a singularly surly and uncommunicative French-speaking civilian took me in charge (with a couple of dragoons to remind me what I was), we went by sloop across the Sea of Azov to Taganrog, a dirty little port, and joined the party of an imperial courier whose journey lay the same way as ours. Ah-ha, thinks I, we'll travel in style, which shows how mistaken one can be.

We travelled in two telegas, which are just boxes on wheels, with a plank at the front for the driver and straw or cushions for the passengers. The courier was evidently in no hurry, for we crawled along at an abominably slow pace, although telegas can travel at a tremendous clip when they want to, with a bell clanging in front and everyone scattering out of their way. It always puzzled me, when I later saw the shocking condition of Russian roads, with their ruts and potholes, how the highways over which the telegas travelled were always smooth and level. The secret was this: When telegas were used by couriers and officials of importance, every peasant in the area was turned out to sand and level the road ahead.

So as we lumbered along, the courier in the first telega and Flashy with his escort in the second, there were always peasants standing by the roadside, men and women, in their belted smocks and ragged puttees, silent, unmoving, staring as we rolled by. This dull brooding watchfulness got on my nerves, especially at the post stations, where they used to assemble in silent groups to stare at us---they were so different from the Crim Tartars I had seen, who are lively, tall, well-made men, even if their women are seedy. The steppe Russians were much smaller and apelike by comparison.

Of course, what I didn't realize then was that these people were slaves---real bound, European white slaves, which isn't easy to understand until you see it. This wasn't always so; it seems that Boris Godunov imposed serfdom on the Russian peasants, which meant that they became the property of the nobles and landowners, who could buy and sell them, hire them out, starve them, lash them, imprison them, take their goods, beasts and womenfolk whenever they chose---in fact, do anything short of maiming them permanently or killing them. They did those things, too, of course, for I saw them, but it was officially unlawful.

It has all changed now; they freed the serfs in '61, just a few years after I was there, and now, I'm told, they are worse off than ever. Russia depended on slavery, you see, and when they freed them they upset the balance and there was tremendous starvation and the economy went to blazes---well, in the old days the landlords had at least kept the serfs alive, for their own benefit, but after emancipation, why should they? And it was all nonsense, anyway; the Russians will always be slaves---so will most of the rest of mankind, of course, but it tends to be more obvious among the Ruskis.

Oh, it was a cheery place, all right, this great empire of Russia as I first saw it in the autumn of '54---a great ill-worked wilderness ruled by a small landed aristocracy with their feet on the necks of a huge human-animal population, with Cossack devils keeping order when required. It was a brutal, backwards place, for the rulers were ever fearful of the serfs and held back everything educational or progressive---even the railway was discouraged, in case it should prove to be revolutionary---and with discontent everywhere, especially among those serfs who had managed to better themselves a little, and murmurings of revolt, the iron hand of government was pressing ever harder. The ''white terror,'' as they called the secret police, were everywhere; the whole population was on their books, and everyone had to have his ''billet,'' his ''ticket to live''---without it you were nobody, you did not exist. Even the nobility feared the police, and it was from a landlord that I heard the saying about being in jail---''Only there shall we sleep sound, for only there are we safe.''1

The land we travelled through was a fit place for such people---indeed, you have to see it to understand why they are what they are. There is no sky, only empty space overhead, and no horizon, only a distant haze, and endless miles of sun-scorched rank grass and emptiness. The few miserable hamlets, each with its rickety church, only seemed to emphasize the loneliness of that huge plain, imprisoning by its very emptiness.

It appalled me, as we rolled along with nothing to do but strain your eyes for the next village, soaked by the rain or sweating in the sun or sometimes huddling against the first wintry gusts that swept the steppes---they seemed to have all weathers together, and all bad. For amusement, of course, you could try to determine which stink was more offensive---the garlic chewed by the driver or the grease of the axles---or watch the shuttlecocks of the wind-witch plant being blown to and fro. I've known depressing journeys, but that was the limit; I'd sooner walk through Wales.

So my spirits continued to droop, but what shook them worst was an incident on the last morning of our journey, when we had halted at a large village only 30 versts (20 miles) from Staro-torsk, the estate to which I was being sent.

The village lay on what seemed to be an important crossroads; there was a river, I remember, and a military camp, and uniforms coming and going from the municipal building where my civilian took me to report my arrival---everything has to be reported to someone or other in Russia, in this case the local registrar, a surly, bull-necked brute in a grey tunic, who pawed over the papers, eyeing me nastily the while.

These Russian civil servants are a bad lot---pompous, stupid and rude at the best. They come in various grades, each with a military title---so that General or Colonel So-and-So turns out to be someone who neglects the parish sanitation or keeps inaccurate records of livestock. The brutes even wear medals and are immensely puffed up, and unless you bribe them lavishly, they will cause you all the trouble they can.

I was waiting patiently, being eyed curiously by the officials and officers with whom the municipal hall was packed, and the registrar picked his teeth, scowling, and then launched into a great tirade in Russian---I gather it was addressed against all Englishmen in general and me in particular. He made it clear to my escort, and everyone else, that he considered it a gross waste of board and lodging that I should be housed at all---he'd have had me in the salt mines for a stinking foreigner who had defiled the holy soil of Mother Russia---and so forth, until he got quite worked up, banging his desk and shouting and glaring, so that the noise and talk in the room died away as everyone stopped to listen.

It was just Jack-in-office unpleasantness and I had no choice but to ignore it. But someone else didn't. One of the officers who had been standing to one side, chatting, suddenly strolled forward in front of the registrar's table, paused to drop his cigarette and set a foot on it, and then without warning lashed the registrar across the face with his riding crop. The fellow shrieked and fell back in his chair, flinging up his hands to ward off another blow; the officer said something in a soft, icy voice and the hands came down, revealing the livid whip mark on the coarse bearded face.

There wasn't a sound in the room, except for the registrar's whimpering, as the officer leisurely raised his crop again and with the utmost deliberation slashed him across the face a second time, laying the bearded cheek open, while the creature screamed but didn't dare move or protect himself. A third slash sent man and chair over; the officer looked at his whip as though it had been in the gutter, dropped it and then turned to me.

''This offal,'' says he, and to my amazement, he spoke in English, ''requires correction. With your permission, I shall reinforce the lesson.'' He looked at the blubbery, bleeding registrar crawling out of the wreck of his chair and rapped out a string of words in that level, chilly whisper; the stricken man changed course and came wriggling across to my feet, babbling and snuffling at my ankles in a most disgusting fashion, while the officer lit another cigarette and looked on.

''He will lick your boots,'' says he, ''and I have told him that if he bleeds on them, I shall have him knouted. You wish to kick him in the face?''

As you know, I'm something in the bullying line myself, and given a moment, I dare say I'd have accepted; it isn't every day you have the opportunity. But I was too amazed---aye, and alarmed, too, at the cold, deliberate brutality I'd seen, and the registrar seized the opportunity to scramble away, followed by a shattering kick from my protector.

''Scum---but rather wiser scum,'' says he. ''He will not insult a gentleman again. A cigarette, Colonel?'' And he held out a gold case of those paper abominations I'd tried at Sebastopol. I let him light one for me; it tasted like dung soaked in treacle.

''Captain Count Nicholas Pavlovitch Ignatieff,''2 says he in that cold, soft (continued on page 208) Flashman At The Charge (continued from page 205) voice, ''at your service.'' And as our eyes met through the cigarette smoke, I thought, hollo, this is another of those momentous encounters. You didn't have to look at this chap twice to remember him forever. It was the eyes. One was blue, but the other had a divided iris, half blue, half brown, and the oddly fascinating effect of this was that you didn't know where to look but kept shifting from one to the other.

For the rest, he had gingerish, curling hair and a square, masterful face that was in no way impaired by a badly broken nose. He looked tough and immensely self-assured; it was in his glance, in the abrupt way he moved, in the slant of the long cigarette between his fingers, in the rakish tilt of his peaked cap, in the immaculate white tunic of the Imperial Guards. He was the kind who knew exactly what was what, where everything was and precisely who was who---especially himself. He was probably a devil with women, admired by his superiors, hated by his rivals and abjectly feared by his subordinates. One word summed him up: bastard.

''I caught your name, in that beast's outburst,'' says he. He was studying me calmly, as a doctor regards a specimen. ''You are the officer of Balaclava, I think. Going to Starotorsk, to be lodged with Colonel Count Pencherjevsky. He already has another English officer---under his care.'' For some reason, I found my cigarette trembling between my fingers; it was foolish, with this outwardly elegant, precise, not unfriendly young gentleman doing no more than making civil conversation. But I'd just seen him at work and knew the kind of soulless, animal cruelty behind the suave mask.

''We may meet at Starotorsk,'' says Ignatieff, and with the slightest bow to me he turned away, and my escort was hustling me respectfully out to the telega, as though he couldn't get away fast enough. I was all for it; the less time you spend near folk like that the better.

After a few miles, the bare steppe was giving way to large, well-cultivated fields, with beasts and peasants labouring away, the road improved, and presently, on an eminence ahead of us there was a great, rambling timbered mansion with double wings, and extensive outbuildings, all walled and gated, and the thin smoke of a village just visible beyond. We bowled up a fine gravel drive between well-kept lawns with willow trees on their borders, past the arched entrance of a large courtyard and onto a carriage sweep before the house, where a pretty white fountain played.

Well, thinks I, cheering up a bit, this will do. Civilisation in the midst of barbarism, and very fine, too. Pleasant grounds, genteel accommodation, salubrious outlook, company's own water, no doubt, to suit overworked military men in need of rest and recreation. Flashy, my son, this will answer admirably until they sign the peace. The only note out of harmony was the Cossack guard lounging near the front steps, to remind me that I was a prisoner, after all.

A steward emerged, bowing, and my civilian explained that he would conduct me to my apartment and thereafter I would doubtless meet Count Pencherjevsky. I was led into a cool, light-panelled hall, and if anything was needed to restore my flagging spirits, it was the fine furs on the well-polished floor, the comfortable leather furniture, the flowers on the table, the cosey air of civilian peace and the delightful little blonde who had just descended the stairs. She was so unexpected, I must have goggled like poor Willy in the presence of his St. John's Wood whore.

And she was worth a long stare. About middle height, perhaps 18 or 19, plump-bosomed, tiny in the waist, with a saucy little upturned nose, pink, dimpled cheeks and a cloud of silvery-blonde hair, she was fit to make your mouth water---especially if you hadn't had a woman in two months and had just finished a long, dusty journey through southern Russia, gaping at misshapen peasants. I stripped, seized and mounted her in a twinkling of my mind's eye, as she tripped past, I bowing my most military bow and she disregarding me beyond a quick, startled glance from slanting grey eyes. May it be a long war, thinks I, watching her bouncing out of sight, and then my attention was taken by the major-domo, muttering the eternal ''Pajalusta, Excellence,'' and leading me up the broad, creaky staircase, along a turning passage, and finally halting at a broad door. He knocked and an English voice called:

''Come in---no, hang it all---khadec-tyeh!''

I grinned at the friendly familiar sound and strode in, saying: ''Hollo, yourself, whoever you are,'' and putting out my hand. A man of about my own age, who had been reading on the bed, looked up in surprise, swung his legs to the ground, stood up and then sank back on the bed again, gaping as though I were a ghost. He shook his head, stuttering, and then got out:

''Flashman! Good heavens!''

I stopped short. The face was familiar, somehow, but I didn't know from where. And then the years rolled away and I saw a boy's face under a tile hat and heard a boy's voice saying: ''I'm sorry. Flashman.'' Yes, it was him, all right---Scud East of Rugby.

For a long moment we just stared at each other, until we both found our voices in the same phrase: ''What on earth are you doing here?'' And then we stopped, uncertainly, until I said:

''I was captured at Balaclava, three weeks back.''

''They took me at Silistria, four months ago. I've been here five weeks and two days.''

And then we stared at each other some more, and finally I said:

''Well, you certainly know how to make a fellow at home. Ain't you going to offer me a chair, even?''

He jumped up at that, colouring and apologizing---still the same Scud, I could see. He was taller and thinner than I remembered: his brown hair was receding, too, but he still had that quick, awkward nervousness I remembered.

''I'm so taken aback,'' he stuttered, pulling up a chair for me. ''Why---why, I am glad to see you, Flashman! Here, give me your hand, old fellow! There! Well---well---my, what a mountainous size you've grown, to be sure! You always were big . . . er, a tall chap, of course, but. . . . I say, isn't this a queer fix, us meeting again like this . . . after so long! Let's see, it must be fourteen, no, fifteen years since ... since ... ah....''

''Since Arnold kicked me out for being pissy drunk?''

He coloured again. ''I was going to say, since we said goodbye.''

''Aye. Well, ne'er mind. What's your rank, Scud? Major, eh? I'm a colonel.''

''Yes,'' says he. ''I see that.'' He gave me an odd, almost shy grin. ''You've done well---everyone knows about you---all the fellows from Rugby talk about you, when one meets 'em. you know. . . .''

''Do they, though? Not with any great love, I'll be bound, eh, young Scud?''

''Oh, come!'' cries he. ''What d'you mean? Oh, stuff! We were all boys then, and boys never get on too well, 'specially when some are bigger and older and . . . why, that's all done with years ago! Why---everyone's proud of you, Flashman! Brooke and Green---and young Brooke---he's in the navy, you know.'' He paused. ''The Doctor would have been proudest of all, I'm sure.''

Aye, he probably would, thinks I, the damned old hypocrite.

I couldn't be sure if he meant it or not. God knows, Scud East had no cause to love me, and the sight of him had so taken me back to that last black day at Rugby that I'd momentarily forgotten we were men now and things had changed---perhaps even his memories of me. For he did seem pleased to see me, now that he'd got over his surprise---of course, that could just be acting on his part, or making the best of a bad job, or just Christian decency. I found myself weighing him up; I'd knocked him about a good deal, in happier days, and it came as a satisfaction to realize that I could probably still do it now, if it came to the pinch; he was still smaller and thinner than I. At that, I'd never detested him as much as his manly-mealy little pal, Brown: He'd had more game in him than the others, had East, and now---well, if he was disposed to be civil and let bygones be bygones. . . . We were bound to be stuck together for some months, at least.

I said: ''What about this place, then---and this fellow Pencherjevsky?''

He hesitated a moment, glanced towards the wall and, as he walked over to it, said loudly: ''Oh, it is as you see it---a splendid place. They've treated me well---very well, indeed.'' And then he beckoned me to go over beside him, at the same time laying a finger on his lips. I went, wondering, and followed his pointing finger to a curious protuberance in the ornate carving of the panelling beside the stove. It looked as though a small funnel had been sunk into the carving and covered with a fine metal grille, painted to match the surrounding wood.

''I say, old fellow,'' says East, ''what d'you say to a walk? The count has splendid gardens and we're free to stroll, you know.''

I took the hint, and we descended the stairs to the hall and out onto the lawns. The lounging Cossack looked at us but made no move to follow. As soon as we were at a safe distance, I asked: ''What on earth was it?''

''Speaking tube, carefully concealed,'' says he. ''I looked out for it as soon as I arrived---there's one in the next room, too, where you'll be. I fancy our Russian hosts like to be certain we're not up to mischief.''

''Well, I'm damned! The deceitful brutes! Is that any way to treat gentlemen? And how the deuce did you ever find it?''

''Oh, just caution,'' says he, offhand, but then he thought for a moment and went on: ''I know a little about such things, you see. When I was taken at Silistria, although I was officially with the bashi-bazouk people, I was more on the political side, really. I think the Russians know it, too. When they brought me up this way, I was most carefully examined at first by some very shrewd gentlemen from their staff---I speak some Russian, you see. Oh, yes, my mother's family married in this direction, a few generations ago, and we had a sort of great-aunt who taught me enough to whet my interest. Anyway, on top of their suspicions of me, that accomplishment is enough to make 'em pay very close heed to H. East, Esq.''

''It's an accomplishment you can pass on to me as fast as you like,'' says I. ''But d'you mean they think you're a spy?''

''Oh, no, just worth watching---and listening to. They're the most suspicious folk in the world, you know; trust no one, not even each other. And for all they're supposed to be thickheaded barbarians, they have some clever jokers among 'em.''

Something made me ask: ''D'you know a chap called Ignatieff---Count Ignatieff?''

''Do I not!'' says he. ''He was one of the fellows who ran the rule over me when I came up here. That's Captain Swing with blue blood, that one---why, d'you know him?''

I told him what had happened earlier in the day and he whistled. ''He was there to have a look and a word with you, you may depend on it. We must watch what we say, Flashman.'' It struck me he was a cool, assured hand, this East---of course, he had been all that as a boy, too.

''Count Pencherjevsky---an ogre, loudmouthed, brutal and a tyrant. He's a Cossack, who rose to command a hussar regiment in the army, won the tsar's special favour and retired here, away from his own tribal land. He rules his estate like a despot, treats his serfs abominably and will surely have his throat cut one day. I can't abide him, and keep out of his way, although I sometimes dine with the family, for appearance' sake. But he's been decent enough, I'll admit; gives me the run of the place, a horse to ride, that sort of thing.''

''Ain't they worried you might ride for it?'' says I.

''Where to? We're two hundred miles north of the Crimea here, with nothing but naked country in between. Besides, the count has a dozen or so of his old Cossacks in his service---they're all the guard anyone needs. Kubans, who could ride down anything on four legs. I saw them bring back four serfs who ran away, soon after I got here---they'd succeeded in travelling twenty miles before the Cossacks caught them. Those devils brought them back tied by the ankles and dragged behind their ponies---the whole way!'' He shuddered. ''They were flayed to death in the first few miles!''

I felt my stomach give one of its little heaves. ''But, anyway, those were serfs,'' says I. ''They wouldn't do that sort of thing to------''

''Wouldn't they, though?'' says he. ''Well, perhaps not. But this ain't England, you know, or France, or even India. This is Russia---and these landowners are no more accountable than . . . than a baron in the Middle Ages. Oh, I dare say he'd think twice about mishandling us---still, I'd think twice about getting on his wrong side. But, I say, I think we'd best go back and treat 'em to some harmless conversation---if anyone's bothering to listen.''

As we strolled back, I asked him a question which had been exercising me somewhat. ''Who's the fair beauty I saw when I arrived?''

He went red as a poppy and I thought, Oho, what have we here, eh? Young Scud with lecherous notions---or pure Christian passion, I wonder which?

''That would be Valentina,'' says he, ''the count's daughter. She and her aunt Sara---and an old deaf woman who is a cousin of sorts---are his only family. He is a widower.'' He cleared his throat nervously. ''One sees very little of them; as I said, I seldom dine with the family. Valentina . . . ah . . . is married.''

I found this vastly amusing---it was my guess that young Scud had gone wild about the little bundle---small blame to him---and, like the holy little humbug he was, preferred to avoid her rather than court temptation. One of Arnold's shining young knights, he was. Well, lusty old Sir Lancelot Flashy had galloped into the lists now---too bad she had a husband, of course, but at least she'd be saddlebroken. At that, I'd have to see what her father was like and how the land lay. One must be careful about these things.

I met the family at dinner that afternoon, and a most fascinating occasion it turned out to be. Pencherjevsky was worth travelling a long way to see in himself---the first sight of him, standing at his table head, justified East's description of ogre and made me think of Jack and the Beanstalk, and smelling the blood of Englishmen, which was an unhappy notion, when you considered it.

He must have been well over six and a half feet tall, and even so, he was broad enough to appear squat. His head and face were just a mass of brown hair, trained to his shoulders and in a splendid beard that rippled down his chest. His eyes were fine, under huge shaggy brows, and the voice that came out of his beard was one of your thunderous Russian basses. He spoke French well, by the way, and you would never have guessed from the glossy colour of his hair, and the ease with which he moved his huge bulk, that he was over 60. An enormous man, in every sense.

''The Colonel Flashman,'' he boomed. ''Be happy in this house. As an enemy, I say, forget the quarrel for a season; as a soldier, I say, welcome, brother.'' He shook my hand in what were probably only the top joints of his enormous fingers, and crushed it till it cracked. ''Aye---you look like a soldier, sir. I am told you fought in the disgraceful affair at Balaclava, where our cavalry were chased like the rabble they are. I salute you, and every good sabre who rode with you. Chased like rabbits, those tuts [renegades] and moujiks on horseback. Aye, you would not have chased my Kubans so---or Wittgenstein's hussars3 when I had command of them---no, by the great God!'' He glowered down at me, rumbling, as though he would break into ''Fee, fi, fo, fum'' at any moment, and then released my hand and waved towards the two women seated at the table.

''My daughter, Valla, my sister-in-law, Madam Sara.'' I bowed, and they inclined their heads and looked at me with that bold, appraising stare which Russian women use---they're not bashful or missish, those ladies. Valentina, or Valla, as her father called her, smiled and tossed her silver-blonde head---she was a plumply pert little piece, sure enough.

For all that Pencherjevsky looked like Goliath, he had good taste---or whoever ordered his table and domestic arrangements had. The big dining room, like all the apartments in the house, had a beautiful wood-tiled floor; there was a chandelier and any amount of brocade and flowered silk about the furnishings. (Pencherjevsky himself, by the way, was dressed in silk: Most Russian gentlemen wear formal clothes as we do, more or less, but he affected a magnificent shimmering green tunic, clasped at the waist by a silver-buckled belt, and silk trousers of the same colour tucked into soft leather boots---a most striking costume and comfortable, too, I should imagine.)

The food was good, to may relief---a fine soup being followed by fried fish, a ragout of beef and side dishes of poultry and game of every variety, with little sweet cakes and excellent coffee. The wine was indifferent but drinkable. Between the vittles, the four fine bosoms displayed across the table and Pencher-jevsky's conversation, it was a most enjoyable meal.

He questioned me about Balaclava, most minutely, and when I had satisfied his curiosity, astonished me by rapidly sketching how the Russian cavalry should have been handled, with the aid of cutlery, which he clashed about on the table to demonstrate. He knew his business, no doubt of it, but he was full of admiration for our behaviour.

He offered me another glass of wine. ''All good horse soldiers can drink, can't they, Colonel? Not your Sasha, though,'' says he to Valla, with a great wink at me. ''Can you imagine, Colonel, I have a son-in-law who cannot drink? He fell down at his wedding, on this very floor---yes, over there, by God!---after what? A glass or two of vodka! Saint Nicholas! Aye, me---how I must have offended the Father God, to have a son-in-law who cannot drink and does not get me grandchildren.''

At this Valla gave a most unladylike snort and tossed her head, and Aunt Sara, who said very little as a rule, I discovered, set down her glass and observed tartly that Sasha could hardly get children while he was away fighting in the Crimea.

''Fighting?'' cries Pencherjevsky boisterously. ''Fighting---in the horse artillery? Whoever saw one of them coming home on a stretcher? I would have had him in the Bug Lancers, or even the Moscow Dragoons, but---body of Saint Sophia!---he doesn't ride well! A fine son-in-law for a Zaporozhiyan hetman [leader], that!''

''Well, dear Father!'' snaps Valla. ''If he had ridden well and been in the lancers or the dragoons, it is odds the English cavalry would have cut him into little pieces---since you were not there to direct operations!''

''Small loss that would have been,'' grumbles he, and then leaned over, laughing, and rumpled her blonde hair. ''There, little one, he is your man---such as he is. God send him safe home.''

I tell you all this to give you some notion of a Russian country gentleman at home, with his family---but I found myself liking Pencherjevsky. He was gross, loud, boisterous---boorish, if you like---but he was worth ten of your proper gentlemen, to me, at any rate. I got roaring drunk with him that evening, after the ladies had retired, and he sang Russian hunting songs in that glorious organ voice and laughed himself sick trying to learn the words of The British Grenadiers. I flatter myself he took to me enormously---folk often do, of course, particularly the coarser spirits---for he swore I was a credit to my regiment and my country, and God should send the tsar a few like me.

• • •

For the first few weeks of my sojourn at Starotorsk, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and felt absolutely at home. It was so much better than I had expected, the count was so amiable in his bearlike, thundering way, his ladies were civil (for I'd decided to go warily before attempting a more intimate acquaintance with Valla) and easy with me, and East and I were allowed such freedom that it was like a month of weekends at an English country house, without any of the stuffiness. You could come and go as you pleased, treat the place as your own, attend at mealtimes or feed in your chamber, whichever suited---it was liberty hall, no error. I divided my days between working really hard at my Russian, going for walks or rides with Valla and Sara or East, prosing with the count in the evenings, playing cards with the family.

All mighty pleasant---until you discovered that the civility and good nature were no deeper than a May frost, the thin covering on totally alien beings. For all their apparent civilisation, and even good taste, the barbarian was just under the surface and liable to come raging out. It was easy to forget this until some word or incident reminded you---that this pleasant house and estate were like a mediaeval castle, under feudal law; that this jovial, hospitable giant, who talked so knowledgeably of cavalry tactics and the hunting field, and played chess like a master, was also as dangerous and cruel as a cannibal chief; that his ladies, chattering cheerfully about French dressmaking or flower arrangement, were in some respects rather less feminine than Dahomans Amazons.

I've told you something of the serfs already, and most of that I learned firsthand on the Pencherjevsky estate, where they were treated as something worse than cattle. The more fortunate of them lived in the outbuildings and were employed about the house, but most of them were down in the village, a filthy, straggling place of log huts, called isbas, with entrances so low you had to stoop to go in. They were foul, verminous hovels of just one room, with a huge bench bearing many pillows, a big stove and a ''holy corner'' in which there were poor, garish pictures of their saints.

Their food was truly fearful---rye bread, for the most part, and cabbage soup with a lump of fat in it, salt cabbage, garlic stew, coarse porridge and, for delicacies, sometimes a little cucumber or beetroot. And those were the well-fed ones. Their drink was bad---bread fermented in alcohol, which they call kvass (''It's black, it's thick and it makes you drunk,'' as they said), and on special occasions vodka, which is just poison. They'll sell their souls for brandy but seldom get it.

Such conditions of squalor, half the year in stifling heat, half in unimaginable cold, and all spent in backbreaking labour, are enough to explain why they were such an oppressed, dirty, brutish, useless people---just like the Irish, really, but without the gayety. Even the Mississippi niggers were happier---there was never a smile on the face of your serf, just patient, morose misery.

And yet that wasn't half of their trouble. I remember the court that Pencherjevsky used to hold in a barn at the back of the house, and those cringing creatures crawling on their bellies along the floor to kiss the edge of his coat, while he pronounced sentence on them for their offences. You may not believe them, but they're true and I noted them at the time.

There was an iron collar for a woman whose son had run off, and floggings, with either the cudgel or the whip, for several who had neglected their labouring in Pencherjevsky's fields. There was Siberia for a youth employed to clean windows at the house, who had started work too early and disturbed Valla, and for one of the maids, who had dropped a dish. You will say, ''Ah, here's Flashy pulling the longbow,'' but I'm not, and if you don't believe me, ask any professor of Russian history.4

But here's the point---if you'd suggested to Pencherjevsky or his ladies, or even to the serfs, that such punishments were cruel, they'd have thought you were mad. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to them---why, I've seen a man cudgelled by the Cossacks in Pencherjevsky's courtyard---tied to a post half-naked in the freezing weather and smashed with heavy rods until he was a moaning lump of bruised and broken flesh, with half his ribs cracked---and through it all, Valla was standing not ten yards away, never even glancing in his direction but discussing a new sledge harness with one of the grooms.

Pencherjevsky absolutely believed that his moujiks were well off. ''Have I not given them a stone church, with a blue dome and gilt stars? How many villages can show the like, eh?'' And when those he had condemned to years of exile in Siberia were driven off in a little coffle under the nagaikas (whips) of the Cossacks---they would be taken to the nearest town, to join other unfortunates, and they would all walk the whole way---he was there to give them his blessing and they would embrace his knees, crying: ''Izvenete, batushka, vinovat [Pardon, Father, I am guilty],'' and he would nod and say, ''Khorosho [Very well],'' while the housekeeper gave them bundles of dainties from the ''Sudarynia [Lady] Valla.'' God knows what they were---cucumber rinds, probably.

Now, I don't recite all these barbarities to shock or excite your pity nor to pose as one of those holy hypocrites who pretend to be in a great sweat about man's inhumanity to man. I've seen too much of it and know it happens wherever strong folk have absolute power over spiritless creatures. I merely tell you truly what I saw---as for my own view, well, I'm all for keeping the peasants in order, and if hammering 'em does good and makes life better for the rest of us, you won't find me leaping between the tyrant and his victim, crying, ''Stay, cruel despot!'' But I would observe that much of the cruelty I saw in Russia was pure brutishness---I doubt if they even enjoyed it much. They just knew no better.

I wondered sometimes why the serfs, dull, ignorant, superstitious clods though they were, endured it. The truth, as I learned it from Pencherjevsky, was that they didn't always. In the 30 years just ending when I was in Russia, there had been peasant revolts once every fortnight, in one part of the country or another, and as often as not it had taken the military to put them down. Or, rather, it had taken the Cossacks, for the Russian army was a useless thing, as we'd seen in the Crimea. You can't make soldiers out of slaves. But the Cossacks were free, independent tribesmen; they had land and paid little tax, had their own tribal laws, drank themselves stupid and served the tsar from boyhood till they were 50 because they loved to ride and fight and loot---and they liked nothing better than to use their nagaikas on the serfs, which was just nuts to them.

Pencherjevsky wasn't worried about revolution among his own moujiks because, as I say, he regarded himself as a good master. Also, he had Cossacks of his own to strike terror into any malcontents. ''And I never commit the great folly,'' says he. ''I never touch a serfwoman---or allow one to be used or sold as a concubine.'' (Whether he said it for my benefit or not, it was bad news, for I hadn't had a female in ages, and some of the peasants---like Valla's maid---were not half bad-looking once they were washed.) ''These uprisings on other estates---look into them and I'll wager every time the master has ravished some serf wench, or stolen a moujik's wife, or sent a young fellow into the army so that he can enjoy his sweetheart. They don't like it, I tell you---and I don't blame them!''

Because I paid attention, toadylike, to his proses, and was eager in studying his language, he assumed I was interested in his appalling country and its ways and was at pains to educate me, as he saw it. From him I learned of the peculiar laws governing the serfs---how they might be free if they could run away for ten years; how some of them were allowed to leave the estates and work in the towns, provided they sent a proportion of earnings to their master; how some of these serfs became vastly rich---richer than their masters, sometimes, and worth millions---but still could not buy their freedom unless he wished. Some serfs even owned serfs. It was an idiotic system, of course, but the landowners were all for it, and even the humanitarian ones believed that if it were changed and political reforms allowed, the country would dissolve in anarchy. I dare say they were right, but myself, I believe it will happen, anyway; it was starting even then, as Pencherjevsky admitted.

''The agitators are never idle,'' says he. ''You have heard of the pernicious German-Jew Marx?''5 (I didn't like to tell him Marx had been at my wedding, as an uninvited guest [see Royal Flash].) ''He vomits his venom over Europe---aye, he and other vile rascals like him would spread their poison even to our country if they could. Praise God the moujiks are unlettered folk---but they can hear, and our cities crawl with revolutionary criminals of the lowest stamp. What do they understand of Russia? What do they seek to do but ruin her? And yet countries like your own give harbour to such creatures, to brew their potions of hate against us! Aye, and against you, too, if you could only see it! You think to encourage them, for the downfall of your enemies, but you will reap the wild wind also, Colonel Flashman!''

The thing that bored me most, needless to say, was being without a woman. I tried my hand with Valla, when we got to know each other and I had decided she wasn't liable to run squealing to her father. By George, she didn't need to. I gave her bottom a squeeze and she laughed at me and told me she was a respectable married woman: Taking this as an invitation, I embraced her, at which she wriggled and giggled, puss-like, and then hit me an atrocious clout in the groin with her clenched fist and ran off, laughing. I walked with a crouch for days and decided that these Russian ladies must be treated with respect.

East felt the boredom of captivity in that white wilderness more than I and spent long hours in his room, writing. One day when he was out. I had a turn through his papers and discovered he was writing his impressions, in the form of an endless letter to his odious friend Brown, who was apparently farming in New Zealand. There was stuff about me in it, which I read with interest: ''I don't know what to think of Flashman. He is very well liked by all in the house, the count especially, and I fear that little Valla admires him, too---it would be hard not to. I suppose, for he is such a big, handsome fellow. [Good for you, Scud; carry on.] I say I fear---because sometimes I see him looking at her, with such an ardent expression, and I remember the kind of brute he was at Rugby, and my heart sinks for her fair innocence. Oh, I trust I am wrong! I tell myself that he has changed---how else did the mean, cowardly, spiteful, bullying toady [Steady, now, young East] become the truly brave and valiant soldier that he now undoubtedly is? But I do fear, just the same: I know he does not pray, and that he swears and has evil thoughts, and that the cruel side of his nature is still there. Oh, my poor little Valla---but there, old fellow, I mustn't let my dark suspicions run away with me. I must think well of him and trust that my prayers will help to keep him true, and that he will prove, despite my doubts, to be an upright, Christian gentleman at last.''

You know, the advantage to being a wicked bastard is that everyone pesters the Lord on your behalf: If volume of prayers from my saintly enemies means anything, I'll be saved when the Archbishop of Canterbury is damned. It's a comforting thought.

So time passed, and Christmas came and went, and I was slipping into a long, bored, tranquil snooze as the months went by. And I was getting soft, and thoroughly off guard, and all the time hell was preparing to break loose.

It was shortly before ''the old wives' winter,'' as the Russians call February, that Valla's husband came home for a week's furlough. He was an amiable, studious little chap, who got on well with East, but the count plainly didn't like him, and once he had given us the news from Sebastopol---which was that the siege was still going on and getting nowhere, which didn't surprise me---old Pencherjevsky just ignored him and retired moodily to his study and took to drink. He had me in to help him, too, and I caught him giving me odd, thoughtful looks, which was disconcerting, and growling to himself before topping up another bumper of brandy and drinking sneering toasts to ''the blessed happy couple,'' as he called them.

It was a little more than a week after Valla's husband had left that something happened, something quite bizarre and unbelievable.

One day after the noon meal, Pencherjevsky invited me to go riding with him. This wasn't unusual, but his manner was curt and silent---if it had been anyone but this hulking tyrant, I'd have said he was nervous. We rode some distance from the house and were pacing our beasts through the silent snow fields when he suddenly began to talk---about the Cossacks, of all things. He rambled most oddly at first, about how they rode with bent knees, like jockeys (which I'd noticed, anyway), and how you could tell a Ural Cossack from the Black Sea variety because one wore a sheepskin cap and the other the long string-haired bonnet. And how the flower of the flock were his own people, the Zaporozhiyan Cossacks, or Kubans, who had been moved east to new lands near Azov by the empress generations ago, but he, Pencherjevsky, had come back to the old stamping ground.

''The old days are gone,'' says he, and I see him so clearly still, that huge bulk in his sheepskin tulup, hunched in his saddle, glowering with moody, unseeing eyes across the white wilderness, with the blood-red disk of the winter sun behind him. ''The day of the great Cossack, when we thumbed our noses at tsar and sultan alike and carried our lives and liberty on our lance points. We owed loyalty to none but our comrades and the hetman we elected to lead us---I was such a one. Now it is a new Russia and instead of the hetman, we have rulers from Moscow to govern the tribe. So be it. I make my place here, in my forefathers' land. I have my good estate, my moujiks, my land---the inheritance for the son I never sired.'' He looked at me. ''I would have had one like you, a tall lancer fit to ride at the head of his own sotnia [company, band]. You have a son, eh? A sturdy fellow? Good. I could wish it were not so---that you had no wife in England, no son, nothing to bind you or call you home. I would say to you then: 'Stay with us here. Be as a son to me. Be a husband to my daughter and get yourself a son, and me a grandson, who will follow after us and hold our land here, in this new Russia, this empire born of storm, where only a man who is a man can plant himself and his seed and endure.' That is what I would say.

''As it is,'' he growled on, ''I have a son-in-law---you saw what kind of a thing he is. God knows how any daughter of mine could. . . . I have no grandsons---he gets me none!'' And he growled and spat and then swung round to face me. For a moment he wrestled with his tongue and couldn't speak, and then it came out in a torrent.

''There must be a man to follow me here! I am too old now, there are no children left in me or I would marry again. Valla, my lovely child, is my one hope---but she is tied to this . . . this empty thing, and I see her going childless to her grave. Unless. . . .'' He was gnawing at his lip and his face was terrific. ''Unless . . . she can bear me a grandson. It is all I have to live for! At least a Pencherjevsky shall rule here---what I have built will not be squandered piecemeal among the rabble of that fellow's knock-kneed relatives! A man shall get my Valla a son!''

I'm not slow on the uptake, even with a bearded baboon nearly seven feet tall roaring at my face from a few inches away, and what I understood from this extraordinary outburst simply took my breath away. I'm all for family, you understand, but I doubt if I have the dynastic instinct as strong as all that.

''You are such a man,'' says he, and suddenly he edged his horse even closer and crushed my arm in his enormous paw. ''You can get sons---you have done so,'' he croaked, his livid face beside mine. ''You have a child in England. When the war is over, you will leave here and go to England, far away. Only you and I will know!''

An impetuous fellow, this count---it never occurred to him that it might be his little Valla who was barren and not her husband. However, that was not for me to say, so I kept mum and left all the arrangements to papa.

He did it perfectly. I sallied forth at midnight and, feeling not unlike a prize bull at the agricultural show---'' 'Ere 'e is, ladies 'n' gennelmen, Flashman Buttercup the Twenty-first of Horny Bottom Farm''---tiptoed out of the corridor where my room and East's lay and set off on the long promenade to the other wing. It was ghostly in that creaky old house, with not a soul about, but true love spurred me on and, sure enough, Valla's door was ajar, with a little sliver of light lancing across the passage floor.

I popped in---and she was kneeling beside the bed, praying! I didn't know whether it was for forgiveness for the sin of adultery or for the sin to be committed successfully, and I didn't stop to ask. There's no point in talking or hanging back shuffling on these occasions and saying: ''Ah . . . well, shall we . . . ?'' On the other hand, one doesn't go roaring and ramping at respectable married women, so I stooped and kissed her very gently, drew off her nightdress and eased her onto the bed. I felt her plump little body trembling under my hands, so I kissed her long and carefully, fondling her and murmuring nonsense in her ear, and then her arms went round my neck.

Frankly, I think the count had underestimated her horse-artillery husband, for she had learned a great deal from somewhere. I'd been prepared for her to be reluctant or to need some jollying along, but she entered into the spirit of the thing like a tipsy widow, and it was from no sense of duty or giving the house of Pencherjevsky its money's worth that I stayed until past four o'clock. I do love a bouncy blonde with a hearty appetite, and when I finally crawled back to my own chilly bed, it was with the sense of an honest night's work well done.

But if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well, and since there seemed to be an unspoken understanding that the treatment should be continued, I made frequent forays to Valla's room in the ensuing nights. And so far as I'm a judge, the little baggage revelled in being a dutiful daughter---they're a damned randy lot, these Russians. Something to do with the cold weather, I dare say. A curious thing was, I soon began to feel as though we were truly married, and no doubt this had something to do with the purpose behind our night games; yet during the day we remained on the same easy terms as before, and if Sara grudged her niece the pleasuring she was getting, she never let on. Pencherjevsky said nothing, but from time to time I would catch him eyeing us with sly satisfaction, fingering his beard at the table.

The only fly in the ointment that I could see was the possibility that during the months ahead it might become apparent that I was labouring in vain. And then something happened which made the whole speculation pointless.

From time to time in the first winter months, there had been other guests at the big house of Starotorsk: military ones. The nearest township---where I'd encountered Ignatieff---was an important army headquarters, a sort of staging post for the Crimea; but as there was no decent accommodation in the place, the more important wayfarers were in the habit of putting up with Pencherjevsky. On these occasions, East and I were politely kept in our rooms, with a Cossack posted in the corridor and our meals sent up on trays, but we saw some of the comings and goings from our windows---Liprandi, for example, and a grandee with a large military staff who East said was Prince Worontzoff. After one such visit, it was obvious to both of us that some sort of military conference had been held in the count's library---you could smell it the next morning and there was a big map easel leaned up in a corner that hadn't been there before.

''We should keep our eyes and ears open,'' says East to me later. ''Do you know---if we could have got out of our rooms when that confabulation was going on, we might have crept into the old gallery and heard all kinds of useful intelligence.''

This was a sort of screened minstrels' gallery that overlooked the library; you got into it by a little door off the main landing. But it was no welcome suggestion to me, as you can guess, who am all for lying low.

''Rot!'' says I. ''We ain't spies---and if we were, and the whole Russian general staff were to blab their plans within earshot, what could we do with the knowledge?''

''Who knows?'' says he, looking keen. ''That Cossack they put to watch our doors sleeps half the night---did you know? Reeking of brandy. We could get out, I dare say---I tell you what, Flashman, if another high-ranker comes this way. I think we're bound to try and overhear him, if we can. It's our duty.''

''Duty?'' says I, alarmed. ''Duty to eavesdrop? What kind of company have you been keeping lately? I can't see Raglan, or any other honourable man, thinking much of that sort of conduct.'' The high moral line, you see; deuced handy sometimes. ''Why, we're as good as guests in this place.''

''We're prisoners,'' says he, ''and we haven't given any parole. Any information we can come by is a legitimate prize of war---and if we heard anything big enough, it might even be worth trying a run for it. We're not that far from the Crimea.'' This was appalling. Wherever you go, however snug you may have made yourself, there is always one of these dutybound, energetic bastards trying to make trouble.

However, after that small discussion, the weeks had slipped by without any other important Russians visiting the place, and then came my diversion with Valla, and East's ridiculous daydream went clean out of my mind. And then, about ten days after I had started galloping her, a couple of Ruski staff captains jingled into the courtyard one morning, to be followed by a large horse sled, and shortly afterwards comes the count's major-domo to East and me, presenting his apologies and chivvying us off to our rooms.

We took the precaution of muffling the hidden speaking tube and kept a good watch from East's window that day. We saw more sleds arrive, and from the distant hum of voices in the house and the sound of tramping on the stairs, we realized there must be a fair-sized party in the place. East was all excited, but what really stirred him was when a sled arrived late in the afternoon and Pencherjevsky himself was in the yard to meet it---attired as we'd never seen him before, in full dress uniform.

''This is important,'' says East, his eyes alight. ''Depend upon it, that's some really big wig. Gad! I'd give a year's pay to hear what passes below tonight.'' He was white with excitement. ''Flashman, I'm going to have a shot at it!''

''Well, don't count on me,'' I told him. ''It ain't worth it---they won't be saying anything worth a damn---it ain't safe and, by thunder, it's downright ungentlemanly. So now!''

To my surprise, he patted my arm. ''I respect what you say, old fellow,'' says he. ''But---I can't help it. I may be wrong, but I see my duty differently, don't you understand? I know it's St. Paul's to a pub it'll be a fool's errand, but---well, you never know. And I'm not like you---I haven't done much for queen and country. I'd like to try.''

Well, there was nothing for it but to get my head under the bedclothes that night and snore like hell, to let the world know that Flashy wasn't up to mischief. Neither, it transpired, was the bold East: He reported next day that the Cossack had stayed awake all night, so his expedition had to be called off. But the sleds stayed there all day, and the next, and they kept us cooped up all the time, and the Cossack remained vigilant, to East's mounting frenzy.

I was almost out of patience with him by dinnertime, when who should come up with the servants bearing dinner but Valla. She had just dropped in to see us, she said, and was very bright and played a three-handed card game with us, which was a trying one for East, I could see. He was jumpy as a cat with her at the best of times, blushing and falling over his feet, and now in addition he was fighting to keep from asking her what was afoot downstairs and who the visitors were. She prattled on, till about nine, and then took her leave, and as I held the door for her, she gave me a glance and a turn of her pretty blonde head that said, as plain as words: ''It's been three nights now. Well?'' I went back to my room next door, full of wicked notions and leaving East yawning and brooding.

If I hadn't been such a lustful brute, no doubt prudence would have kept me abed that night. But at midnight I was peeping out and there was the Cossack, slumped on his stool, head back and mouth open, reeking like Davis' cellar. Valla's work, thinks I, the charming little wretch.

All was still up here, but there was a dim light down in the hall, and through the banisters I could see two whitetunicked and helmeted sentries on the big double doors of the library, with their sabres drawn, and an orderly officer pacing idly about, smoking a cigarette. I flitted on and two minutes later was stallioning away like billy-o with my modest flower of the steppes---by jingo, she was in a fine state of passion, I remember. We had one violent bout, and then some warm wine from her little spirit lamp, and talked softly and dozed and played, and then went to it again, very slowly, and I can see that lovely white shape in the flickering light even now and smell the perfume of that silver hair and---dear me, how we old soldiers do run on.

''You must not linger too long, sweetheart,'' says she, at last. ''Even drunk Cossacks don't sleep forever,'' and giggled, nibbling at my chin. So I kissed her a long good night, with endearments, resumed my nightshirt, squeezed her bouncers again for luck and toddled out into the cold, along her corridor, down the little stairs to the landing---and froze in icy shock against the wall on the second step, my heart going like a hammer.

There was someone on the landing. I could hear him and then see him by the dim light from the far corridor where my room lay. He was crouched by the archway, listening, a man in a nightshirt, like myself. With a wrenching inward sigh, I realized that it could only be East.

The fool had stayed awake, seen the Cossack asleep and was now bent on his crackbrained patriotic mischief. I hissed very gently, had the satisfaction of seeing him try to leap through the wall, and then was at his side, shushing him for all I was worth. He seized me, gurgling.

''You! Flashman!'' He let out a shuddering breath. ''What---? You've been . . . why didn't you tell me?'' I wondered what the blazes this meant, until he whispered fiercely: ''Good man! Have you heard anything? Are they still there?''

The madman seemed to think I'd been on his eavesdropping lay. Well, at least I'd be spared recriminations for fornicating with his adored object. I shook my head, he bit his lip, and then the maniac breathed in my ear: ''Come, then, quickly! Into the gallery---they're still down there!'' And while I was peeping, terrified, into the dimness through the banisters, where the white sentries were still on guard, he suddenly flitted from my side across the landing. I daren't even try a loud whisper to call him back: He was fumbling with the catch of the little door in the far shadows, and I was just hesitating before bolting for bed and safety when from our corridor sounded a cavernous yawn. Panicking, I shot across like a whippet, clutching vainly at East as he slipped through the low aperture into the gallery. Come back, come back, you mad bastard, my lips were saying, but no sound emerged, which was just as well, for with the opening of the little gallery door, the clear tones of someone in the library echoed up to us. And light was filtering up through the fine screen which concealed the gallery from the floor below. If our Cossack guard was waking and took a turn to the landing, he'd see the dim glow from the open gallery door. Gibbering silently to myself, halfway inside the little opening, I crept forward, edging the door delicately shut behind me.

East was flat on the dusty gallery floor. I lay panting and terrified, hearing the voice down in the library saying in Russian: ''So there would be no need to vary the orders at present. The establishment is large enough and would not be affected.'' I remember those words because they were the first I heard. I had just determined to slide out and leave East alone to his dangerous and useless foolery when I became conscious of a rather tired, hoarse but well-bred voice speaking in the library, and one word that he used froze me where I lay.

''So that is the conclusion of our agenda? Good. We are grateful to you, gentlemen. You have laboured well and we are well pleased with the reports you have laid before us. There is item seven, of course,'' and the voice paused. ''Late as it is, perhaps Count Ignatieff would favour us with a résumé of the essential points again.''

Ignatieff. My icy bully of the registrar's office. For no reason, I felt my pulse begin to run even harder. Cautiously, I turned my head and put an eye to the nearest aperture.

Down beneath us, Pencherjevsky's fine long table was agleam with candles and littered with papers. There were five men round it. At the far end, facing us, Ignatieff was standing, very spruce and masterful in his white uniform; behind him there was the huge easel, covered with maps. On the side to his left was a slim, black-haired fellow in a blue uniform coat frosted with decorations---a marshal, if ever I saw one. Opposite him, on Ignatieff's right, was a tall, bald, beak-nosed civilian, with his chin resting on his folded hands. At the end nearest us was a high-backed chair whose wings concealed the occupant, but I guessed he was the last speaker, for an aide seated at his side was saying: ''Is it necessary, Majesty? It is approved, after all, and I fear Your Majesty is overtired already. Perhaps tomorrow....''

''Let it be tonight,'' says the hidden chap, and his voice was dog-weary. ''I am not as certain of my tomorrows as I once was. And the matter is of the first urgency. Pray proceed, Count.''

As the aide bowed, I was aware of East craning to squint back at me. His face was a study and his lips silently framed the words: ''Tsar? The tsar?''

Well, who else would they call Majesty?6 I didn't know, but I was all ears and eyes now as Ignatieff bowed and half-turned to the map behind him. That soft, metallic voice rang upwards from the library panelling.

''Item seven, the plan known as the expedition of the Indus. By Your Majesty's leave.''

I thought I must have mis-heard. Indus---that was in northern India! What the devil did they have to do with that?

''Clause the first,'' says Ignatieff. ''That with the attention of the allied powers, notably Great Britain, occupied in their invasion of Your Majesty's Crimean province, the opportunity arises to further the policy of eastward pacification and civilisation in those unsettled countries beyond our eastern and southern borders. Clause the second, that the surest way of fulfilling this policy, and at the same time striking a vital blow at the enemy, is to destroy, by native rebellion aided by armed force, the British position on the Indian continent. Clause the third, that the time for invasion by Your Majesty's imperial forces is now ripe and will be undertaken forthwith. Hence, the Indus expedition.''

I think I had stopped breathing; I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

''Clause the fourth,'' says Ignatieff. ''The invasion is to be made by an imperial force of thirty thousand men, of whom ten thousand will be Cossack cavalry. General Diugamel,'' and he bowed towards the bald chap, ''Your Majesty's agent in Teheran, believes that it would be assisted if Persia could be provoked into war against Britain's ally Turkey. Clause the fifth------''

''Never mind the clauses,'' says Diugamel. ''That advice has been withdrawn. Persia will remain neutral but hostile to British interest---as she always has been.''

Ignatieff bowed again. ''With Your Majesty's leave. It is so agreed and likewise approved that the Afghan and Sikh powers should be enlisted against the British, in our imperial invasion. They will understand---as will the natives of India---that our expedition is not one of conquest but to overthrow the English and liberate India.'' He paused. ''We shall thus be liberating the people who are the source of Britain's wealth.''

He picked up a pointer and tapped the map, which was of central Asia and northern India. ''We have considered five possible routes which the invasion might take. First, the three desert routes---Ust-Urt-Khiva-Herat, or Raim-Bokhara, or Fort Raim-Syr Daria-Tashkent. These, although preferred by General Khruleff'' ---at this the slim, black-haired fellow stirred in his seat---''have been abandoned because they run through the unsettled areas where we are still engaged in pacifying the Tajik, Uzbeks and Khokan-dians, under the brigand leaders Yakub Beg and Izzat Kutebar. Although stinging reverses have been administered to these lawless bandits and their stronghold of Ak Mechet occupied, they may still be strong enough to hinder the expedition's advance. The less fighting there is to do before we cross the Indian frontier the better.''

Ignatieff lowered his pointer on the map. ''So the southern routes, beneath the Caspian, are preferred---either through Tabriz and Teheran or by Herat. An immediate choice is not necessary. The point is that infantry and artillery may be moved with ease across the south Caspian to Herat, while the cavalry move through Persia. Once we are in Persia, the British will have warning of our attempt, but by then it will be too late---far too late. We shall proceed through Kandahar and Kabul, assisted by the hatred which the Afghans owe the British, and so---to India.

''There are, by reliable report, twenty-five thousand British troops in India and three hundred thousand native soldiers. These latter present no problem---once a successful invasion is launched, the majority of them will desert or join in the rebellion which our presence will inspire. It is doubtful if, six months after we cross the Khyber, a single British soldier, civilian or settlement will remain on the continent. It will have been liberated and restored to its people. They will require our armed presence, for an indefinite period, to guard against counterinvasion.''

At this I heard East mutter, ''I'll bet they will.'' I could feel him quivering with excitement; myself, I was trying to digest the immensity of the thing. Of course, it had been a fear in India since I could remember---the Great Bear coming over the passes, but no one truly believed they'd ever have the nerve or the ability to try it. But now, here it was--- simple, direct and certain. Not the least of the coincidences of our remarkable eavesdrop was that I, who knew as much about Afghan affairs from first hand, and our weakness on the northern Indian frontier, as any man living, should be one of the listeners. As I took it in, I could see it happening; yes, they could do it, all right.

''That, Your Majesty,'' Ignatieff was saying, ''is an essential sketch of our purpose.''

''Thank you, Count.'' It was the weak voice again. ''We have it clear. Gentlemen?'' There was a pause. ''No such attempt has ever been made before. But we are confident---are we not?''

Khruleff nodded slowly. ''It has always been possible. Now it is a certainty. In a stroke, we clear the British from India and extend Your Majesty's imperial . . . influence from the North Cape to the isle of Ceylon. No tsar in history has achieved such an advance for our country. The troops are ample, the planning exact, the conditions ideal. The pick of Britain's army, and of her navy, are diverted in the Crimea, and it is certain that no assistance could be rendered in India within a year. By then--- we shall have supplanted England in southern Asia.''7

''And it can begin without delay?'' says the tsar's voice.

''Immediately, Majesty. By the southern route, we can be at the Khyber, with every man, gun and item of equipment, seven months from this night.'' Ignatieff was almost striking an attitude, his tawny head thrown back, one hand on the table. They waited, silently, and I heard the tsar sigh.

General Diugamel's plan for an invasion through Persia was first put to the tsar in 1854 and was followed in early 1855 by General Khruleff's proposed Afghan-Khyber expedition. The details of the two plans, as given by Flashman, correspond almost exactly with the versions subsequently published as a result of British-intelligence work (see ''Russia's March Towards India,'' published anonymously by an Indian army officer in 1894). Indeed, at various points in Flashman's account, Ignatieff repeats passages from Diugamel and Khruleff almost verbatim.

''So be it, then. Forgive us, gentlemen, for desiring to hear it in summary again, but it is a matter for second and third thoughts, even after the resolve has been given.'' He coughed, wearily. ''All is approved, then---and the other items, with the exception of---yes, item ten. It can be referred to Omsk for further study. You have our leave, gentlemen.''

At this there was a scrape of chairs and East was kicking at me and jabbing a finger at the door behind us. I'd been so spellbound by our enormous discovery, I'd almost forgotten where we were ---but, by gad, it was time we were no longer here. I edged back to the door, East crowding behind me, and then we heard Ignatieff's voice again.

''Majesty, with permission. In connection with item seven---the Indian expedition---mention was made of possible diversionary schemes, to prevent by all means any premature discovery of our intentions. I mentioned, but did not elaborate, a plan for possibly deluding the enemy with a false scent.''

At this we stopped, crouched by the door. He went on:

''Plans have been prepared, but in no considerable detail, for a spurious expedition through your Alaskan province, aimed at the British North American possessions. It was thought that if these could be brought to the attention of the British government, in a suitably accidental manner, they would divert the enemy's attention from the Eastern theatre entirely.''

''I don't like it,'' says Khruleff's voice. ''I have seen the plan, Majesty; it is overelaborate and unnecessary.''

''There are,'' says Ignatieff, quite unabashed, ''two British officers at present confined in this house---prisoners from the Crimea whom I had brought here expressly for the purpose. It should not be beyond our wits to ensure that they discovered the false North American plan; thereafter, they would obviously attempt to escape, to warn their government of it.''

''And then?'' says Diugamel.

''They would succeed, of course. It is no distance to the Crimea---it could be arranged without their suspecting they were mere tools of our purpose. And their government would at least be distracted.''

''Too clever,'' says Khruleff. ''Playing at spies.''

''With submission, Majesty,'' says Ignatieff, ''there would be no difficulty. I have selected these two men with care--- they are ideal for our purpose. One is an agent of intelligence, taken at Silis-tria---a clever, dangerous fellow. Show him the hint of a design against his country and he would fasten on it like a hawk. The other is a very different sort---a great, coarse bully of a man, all brawn and little brain; he has spent his time here lechering after every female he could find.'' I felt East stiffen beside me as we listened to this infernal impudence. ''But he would be necessary---for even if we permitted, and assisted, their escape here and saw that they reached the Crimea in safety, they would still have to rejoin their army, and we could hardly issue orders to our forces in the Crimea to let them pass through. This second fellow is the kind of resourceful villain who would find a way.''

There was a silence, and then Diugamel says: ''I must agree with Khruleff, Majesty. It is not necessary and might even be dangerous. The British are not fools; they smell a rat as soon as anyone. These false plans, these clever stratagems ---they can excite suspicion and recoil on the plotter. Our Indus scheme is soundly based; it needs no pretty folly of this kind.''

''So.'' The tsar's voice was a hoarse murmur. ''The opinion is against you, Count. Let your British officers sleep undisturbed. But we thank you for your zeal in the matter, even so. And now, gentlemen, we have worked long enough-----''

East was bundling me onto the dark landing before the voice had finished speaking. We closed the door gently and tiptoed across towards our passage even as we heard the library doors opening down in the hall. I peeped round the corner; the Cossack was snoring away again and we scuttled silently past him and into East's room. I sank down, shaking, onto his bed, while he fumbled at the candle, muttering furiously till he got it lit. His face was as white as a sheet---but he remembered to muffle the mouth of the hidden speaking tube with his pillow.

''My God, Flashman,'' says he, when he had got his wind back. We were staring helplessly at each other. ''What are we to do?''

''What can we do?'' says I.

''We've got to get away---somehow! They must have news of this at Sebastopol. Raglan's there; he's the commander---if we could get this to him and London, there'd be time. Send troops out---increase the northwest garrisons---perhaps even an expedition into Persia or Afghanistan-----''

''There isn't time,'' says I. ''You heard them---seven months from tonight they'll be on the edge of the Punjab with thirty thousand men and God knows how many Afghans ready to join in for a slap at us and the loot of India. It would take a month to get word to England, twice as long again to assemble an army---if that's possible, which I doubt---and then it's four months to India-----''

''We've got just enough time!'' says he, feverishly. ''Look---look at this, will you?'' And he snatched a book from his bureau: It was some kind of geography or guide, in Russian script---that hideous lettering that always made me think of black-magic recipes for conjuring the Devil. ''See here; this map. Now, I've pieced this together over the past few months, just by listening and using my wits, and I've a fair notion where we are, although Starotorsk ain't shown on this map: too small. But I reckon we're about here, in this empty space---perhaps fifty miles from Ekaterinoslav and thirty from Alexndrovsk, see? It startled me, I tell you; I'd thought we were miles farther inland.''

''So did I,'' says I. ''You're sure you're right?---they must have brought me a hell of a long way round, then.''

''Of course---that's their way! They'll never do anything straight, I tell you. Confuse, disturb, upset---that's their Book of Common Prayer! But don't you see---we're not much above a hundred miles from the north end of the Crimea---maybe only a couple of hundred from Raglan at Sebastopol!''

''With a couple of Russian armies in between,'' I pointed out. ''Anyway, how could we get away from here?''

''Steal a sled at night---horses. If we went fast enough, we could get changes at the post stations on the way, as long as we kept ahead of pursuit. Don't you see, man---it must be possible!'' His eyes were shining fiercely. ''Ignatieff was planning for us to do this very thing! My God, why did they turn him down? Think of it---if he had had his way, they'd be helping us to escape with their bogus information, never dreaming we had the real plans! Of all the cursed luck!''

''Well, they did turn him down,'' says I. ''And it's no go. You talk of stealing a sled---how far d'you think we'd get, with Pencherjevsky's Cossacks on our tail? You can't hide sleigh tracks, you know---not on land as flat as your hat. Even if you could, they know exactly where we'd go---there's only one route''---and I pointed at his map---''through the neck of the Crimean peninsula at---what's it called? Armyansk. They'd overhaul us long before we got there.''

''No, they wouldn't,'' says he, grinning---the same sly, fag grin of 15 years ago. ''Because we won't go that way. There's another road to the Crimea---I got it from this book, but they'd never dream we knew of it. Look, now, old Flashy friend, and learn the advantages of studying geography. See how the Crimean peninsula is joined to mainland Russia---just a narrow isthmus, eh? Now look east a little ways along the coast---what d'ye see?''

''A town called Genitchi,'' says I. ''But if you're thinking of pinching a boat, you're mad-----''

''Boat nothing,'' says he. ''What d'ye see south of Genitchi?''

''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 Genitchi a clear seventy miles through the Sea of Azov to Arabat in the Crimea---and from there it's a bare hundred miles across to Sebastopol! 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 Genitchi, along the causeway to Arabat, and then westward ho to Sebastopol-----''

''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 80 years old today, while Scud East has been mouldering underground at Cawnpore this 40-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 Sebastopol?''

At this he cried out that we must risk it 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.''

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 whips to you! Get out of my sight and off my land.''

''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 pay the soul tax on her grandsons, you know what will happen. The officials will block her stove and she will be driven out---to what? To die in the cold or to starve, and the little ones with her. It is a matter of only one hundred and seventy silver kopecks---I do not ask you to pay for her, but let me find the money, and my friend here. We will be glad to pay! Surely you will let us---be merciful!''

''Look, you,'' says Pencherjevsky, holding himself in. ''Do I care for a handful of kopecks? No! Not if it was a hundred and seventy thousand roubles, either! But you come to me with a pitiful tale of this old crone, who cannot pay the tax on her brats: Do I not know her son---worthless bastard!---is a kulak [a peasant with money, a usurer] in Odessa and could pay it for her, fifty times over! Well, let him! But if he will not, then it is for the government to enforce the law---no man hindering! No, not even me! Suppose I pay or permit you to pay on her behalf, what would happen then? I shall tell you. Next year, and every year thereafter, you would have all the moujiks from here to Rostov bawling at my door: 'We cannot pay the soul tax,8batushka; pay for us, as you paid for So-and-So.' And where does that end?''

''But-----'' the priest was beginning, but Pencherjevsky cut him short.

''You would tell me that you will pay for them all? Aye, Master Blank there would pay---with the filthy money sent by his Communist friends in Germany! So that he could creep among my moujiks, preaching revolution! I know him! So get him hence, priest, out of my sight, before I forget myself!''

He advanced, hands clenched, and the two of them went scuttling down the steps. But the fellow Blank9 had to have a last word:

''You filthy tyrant! You dig your own grave! You and your kind think you can live forever, by oppression and torture and theft---you sow dragon's teeth with your cruelty, and they will grow to tear you! You will see, you fiend!''

Pencherjevsky went mad. He flung his cap on the ground and then ran bawling for his whip, his Cossacks, his sabre, while the two malcontents scampered off for their lives, Blank screaming threats and abuse over his shoulder. I listened with interest as the count raved and stormed: ''After them! I'll have that filthy creature knouted, God help me! Run him down and don't leave an inch of hide on his carcass!''

Within a few moments a group of his Cossacks were in the saddle and thundering out the gate, while he stormed about the hall, raging still: ''The dog! The insolent garbage!''

He stalked away, finally, still cursing, and about an hour later the Cossacks came back and their leader stumped up the steps to report. Pencherjevsky had simmered down a good deal by this time; he had ordered a brew of punch and invited East and myself to join him, and we were sipping at the scalding stuff by the hall fire when the Cossack came in, an old, stout, white-whiskered scoundrel with his belt at the last hole. He was grinning and had his nagaika in his hand.

''Well?'' growled Pencherjevsky. ''Did you catch that brute and teach him manners?''

''Aye, batushka,'' says the Cossack, well pleased. ''He's dead. Thirty cuts---and, pouf! He was a weakling, though.''

''Dead, you say?'' Pencherjevsky set down his cup abruptly, frowning. Then he shrugged: ''Well, good riddance! No one'll mourn his loss. One anarchist less will not trouble the prefect.''

''The fellow Blank escaped,'' continued the Cossack. ''I'm sorry, batushka-----''

''Blank escaped!'' Pencherjevsky's voice came out in a hoarse scream, his eyes dilating. ''You mean---it was the priest you killed! The holy man!'' He stared in disbelief, crossing himself. ''Slava Bogu! [Glory to God!] The priest!''

''Priest? Do I know?'' says the Cossack. ''Was it wrong, batushka?''

''Wrong, animal? A priest! And you . . . you flogged him to death!'' The count looked as though he would have a seizure. He gulped and clawed at his beard; then he blundered past the Cossack, up the stairs, and we heard his door crash behind him.

''My God!'' says East. ''What will this mean?''

''Search me,'' I said. ''They butcher each other so easily in this place---I don't know. I'd think flogging a priest to death is a trifle over the score, though---even for Russia. Old man Pencherjevsky'll have some explaining to do, I'd say---shouldn't wonder if they kick him out of the Moscow Carlton Club.''

We didn't see the count at dinner, but you could see in the servants' faces and feel in the very air of the house that Starotorsk was a place appalled. For once, East forgot to talk about escaping and we went to bed early, saying good night in whispers.

I didn't rest too easy, though. My stove was leaking and making the room stuffy, and the general depression must have infected me, for when I dozed I dreamed badly. Suddenly I was awake, lathered with sweat, and from beneath me in the house there was an appalling crash and the roar of Pencherjevsky's voice, and a pattering of feet, and by that time I was out of bed and into my breeches, struggling with my boots as I threw open the door.

East was in the passage, half-dressed like myself, running for the landing. I reached it on his very heels, crying: ''What's happening? What the devil is it?'' when there was a terrible shriek from Valla's passage and Pencherjevsky was bounding up the stairs, bawling over his shoulder to the Cossacks whom I could see in the hall below.

Valla came hurrying in her nightgown, hair all disordered, eyes starting with terror. ''Father, they are everywhere---in the garden! I saw them---oh!''

There was a crash of musket fire from beyond the front door, splinters flew into the hall and one of the Cossacks sang out and staggered, clutching his leg. The others were at the hall windows, there was a smashing of glass and the sound of baying, screaming voices from outside. Pencherjevsky swore, clasped Valla to him with one enormous arm, saw us and bawled above the shooting: ''That damned priest! They have risen---the serfs have risen! They're attacking the house!''

I've seen quite a few bungled attacks in my time---from Lucknow to Pekin---but nothing half so disorderly as the one on Starotorsk. I gathered afterwards that several thousand of them, whipped on by Blank's fiery oratory, had just up and marched on the house to avenge their priest's death, seizing what weapons were handiest. The Cossacks in their little barrack saw them, knocked a few over with rifle fire and then retired to the main house just as the mob surged into the drive and rushed at the front door. And there it was, touch and go, with the moujiks beating on the panels, smashing in the downstairs windows to clamber in, waving their trowels and torches and yelling for Pencherjevsky's blood.10

At this moment, he seized me by the arm. ''The back way---to the stables! Quickly! Get her away, both of you! We shall hold them here.'' He practically flung her into my arms. ''Take a sled and horses and drive like the wind to the Arianski house---on the Alexan-drovsk road! There she will be safe. But hasten, in God's name!''

There was a tearing crash from the front door, several pistol shots amid the clamour of the mob and the shouting of the Cossacks, and over the banisters I saw the door cave in and a torrent of ragged figures pouring in, driving the Cossacks back towards the foot of the stairs. The smoky glare of their torches turned the place suddenly into a struggling hell, as the Cossacks swung their sabres and nagaikas to force them back.

And Pencherjevsky bundled us into the corridor and then rushed to the head of the stairs. I had a glimpse of his towering bulk, with the smoky glare beneath him, and then the yells and screams from the hall redoubled, there was a rushing of feet, a splintering of timber---and East and I were doubling down the back stairs at speed, Valla sobbing against my chest as I swept her along.

We tore through the kitchen, East pausing to grab some loaves and bottles, while I hurried out into the yard. It was dead still in the moonlight; nothing but the soft stamp of the beasts in their stalls and the distant tumult muffled on the other side of the house. I was into the coach building in a flash, bundled Valla into the biggest sled and was leading round the first of the horses when East joined me, his arms full.

I don't know the record for harnessing a three-horse sled, but I'll swear we broke it; I wrenched home the last buckle while East scuttled across the snow to unbar the gate. I jumped into the driver's seat and tugged the reins, the horses whinnied and reared and then danced forward, any old how---it's deuced difficult, tooling a sled---and with me swearing at the beasts and East swinging up as we slid past, we scraped through the gateway onto the open road beyond.

There was a bang to our left and a shot whistled overhead, causing me to duck and the horses to swerve alarmingly. They were rounding the house wall, a bare 30 yards away, a confused, roaring rabble, torches waving, running to head us off. East seized the whip from its mount and lashed at the beasts and with a bound that nearly overturned us, they tore away, down the road, with the mob cursing at our tail, waving their fists, and one last shot singing wide as we distanced them.

We didn't let up for a mile, though, by which time I had the beasts under control and we were able to pull up on a gentle rise and look back. It was like a Christmas scene, a great white blanket glittering in the full moon and the dark house rising up from it, with the red dots of torchlight dancing among the outbuildings and the thin sound of voices echoing through the frosty air and the stars twinkling in the purple sky. Very bonny, I suppose---and then East clutched my arm. ''My God! Look yonder!''

There was a dull glow at one corner of the house; it grew into an orange flame, licking upwards with a shower of sparks; the torches seemed to dance more madly, and from the sled behind there was a sudden shrieking sob and Valla was trying to struggle out---my God, she still had nothing on but her nightdress, and as she half fell out, it ripped and sent her tumbling into the snow.

I threw the reins to East, jumped down and bundled her quickly back into the sled. There were furs there, any amount of them, and I swaddled her in them before the cold could get at her. ''Father! Father!'' she was moaning, and then she fainted dead away and I laid her down on the back seat and went forward to East, handing him up one of the furs---for we had nothing but our shirts and breeches and boots and the cold was crippling.

''Flashman!'' he cried. ''This is our chance! Heaven-sent! The sled---the horses---and a clear start! We're away, old fellow!''

It shows you what a hectic scramble it had been, with not a moment's pause to collect one's wits from the shock of waking until now, but for a second I didn't see what he was driving at. And then it struck me---escape. One couldn't be sure, of course, but I doubted whether any civilized being would survive what was happening at Starotorsk: it might be days before the police or the army came on the scene and realized that there were three persons not accounted for.

''We must take Valla with us,'' cries he, and even in that ghostly light I'll swear he was blushing. ''We cannot abandon her---God knows what kind of villages these will be we shall pass through---we could not leave her, not knowing what . . . I mean, if we can reach the camp at Sebastopol, she will be truly safe.''

And he would be able to press his suit, no doubt, the poor skirt-smitten ninny, if he ever plucked up courage enough. I wonder what he'd have thought if he'd known I had been pupping his little Ukrainian angel for weeks. And there she was, in the sled with not a stitch to her name.

''You're right!'' I cried. ''We must take her. You are a noble fellow. Scud! Off we go, then, and I'll take the ribbons as soon as you're tired.'' I jumped into the back and off we swept, over the snowy plain, and far behind us the red glow mounted to the night sky.

They are splendid things, these three-horse sleighs, less like a coach than a little room on runners. They are completely enclosed with a great hood, lashed down all round, with flaps which can be secured on all the window spaces, so that when they are down the whole thing is quite snug, and if you have furs enough and a bottle or two, you can be as warm as toast. I made sure everything was secure, set out the bread and a leg of ham, which East had thoughtfully picked up, on the front seat and counted the bottles---three of brandy, one of white wine. Valla seemed to be still unconscious; she was wrapped in a mountain of furs between the seats, and when I opened the rear window flap for light to examine her, sure enough, she was in that uneasy shocked sleep that folk sometimes go into when they've been terribly scared. The shaft of moonlight shone on her silvery hair and on one white tit peeping out saucily from the furs---I had to make sure her heart was beating, of course, but beyond that I didn't disturb her---for the moment. Fine sledges these: The driver is quite walled off.

So there we were; I huddled in my fur, took a pull at the brandy and then crawled out under the side flap onto the mounting of the runner; the wind hit me like a knife, with the snow furrowing up round my legs from the runner blades. We were fairly scudding along as I pulled myself up onto the driver's seat beside East and gave him a swig at the brandy.

He was chattering with cold, even in his fur wrap, so I tied it more securely round him and asked how we were going. He reckoned, if we could strike a village and get a good direction, we might make Genitchi in five or six hours---always allowing for changes of horses on the way. But he was sure we wouldn't be able to stand the cold of driving for more than half an hour at a time. So I took the ribbons and he crept back perilously into the sled---one thing I was sure of: Valla would be safe with him.

If it hadn't been for the biting cold, I'd have enjoyed that moonlight drive. The snow was firm and flat, so that it didn't ball in the horses' hooves, and the runners hissed across the snow---it was strange to be moving at that speed with so little noise. Ahead were the three tossing manes, with the vapour streaming back in the icy air, and beyond that---nothing. A white sheet to the black horizon, a magnificent silver moon and that reassuring polestar dead astern when I looked back.

I was about frozen, though, when I spotted lights to starboard after about 20 minutes and swerved away to find a tumble-down little village, populated by the usual half-human peasants. After consultation with East, I decided to ask the distance and direction to Berdyansk; East was carrying a rough table of places and directions in his head, out of the book he had studied, and from the peasants' scared answers---for they were in awe of any strangers---we were able to calculate our proper course.

East had taken over the reins. Valla had come to while he was in the sled and had had mild hysterics. ''The poor little lamb,'' says East as he took the reins. ''It tore my heart to see her grief, Flashman---so I have given her a little laudanum from a phial which . . . which I carry always with me. She should sleep for several hours; it will be best so.''

I could have kicked him, for if there's one thing I'd fancy myself good at, it's comforting a bereaved and naked blonde under a fur rug. But he had put her to sleep, no error, and she was snoring like a walrus. So I had to amuse myself with bread and ham and try to snatch a nap myself.

We made good progress and after a couple of hours found a way station, by great good luck, on what must have been the Mariupol road. We got three new nags and bowled away famously, but what with lack of sleep, it was getting to be hard work now, and a couple of hours after sunrise we pulled up in the first wood we'd seen---a straggly little affair of stunted bushes, really---and decided to rest ourselves and the horses. Valla was still drugged and East and I slept like the dead.

I woke first, and when I put my head out, the sky was already dimming in the late afternoon. It was bleak and grey and freezing starvation, and looking through the twisted branches at the pale, endless waste, I felt a shiver running through me that had nothing to do with cold. Not far away, there were two or three of those funny little mounds called kurgans, which I believe are the barrows of long-forgotten barbarian peoples: They looked uncanny in the failing light, like monstrous snowmen. The stillness was awful: You could feel not even a breath of wind but just the cold and the weight of emptiness hanging over the steppe.

I roused East, and then we made all fast and I took the reins and off we slid silently southwest, past those lonely kurgans, into the icy wilderness. And then from somewhere far off to my right I heard it---that thin, dismal sound that is the terror of the empty steppe, unmistakable and terrifying, drifting through the vast distance: the eldritch cry of the wolf.

The horses heard it, too, and whinnied, bounding forward in fear with a stumble of hooves, until we were flying at our uttermost speed. My imagination was flying even faster: I remembered Pencherjevsky's story of the woman who had thrown her children out when those fearful monsters got on the track of her sled and had been executed for it, and countless other tales of sleds run down by famished packs and their occupants literally eaten alive. I daren't look back for fear of what I might see loping over the snow behind me.

The cry was not repeated, however, and after a few more miles I breathed easier. For rather more than an hour, nothing happened; we drove on through the silence. I took another turn, and then I halted not far from another clump of kurgans to let East climb onto the driver's seat again. I had my foot on the runner and he was just chuckling to the horses when it came again---that blood-chilling wail, far closer this time and off to the left. The horses shrieked and the sled shot forward so fast that for a moment I was dragged along, clinging to the side by main strength, until I managed to drag myself inboard, tumbling onto the back seat. Valla was stirring, muttering sleepily, but I'd no time for her; I thrust out my head, staring fearfully across the snow, trying to pierce the dusk, but there was nothing to be seen. East was letting the horses go and the sled was swaying with the speed ---and then it came again, closer still, like the sound of a lost soul falling to hell.

Still nothing, as we fairly flew along; there was another cluster of kurgans just visible in the murk a quarter of a mile or so to our left. As I watched, I saw something flitting between the last two kurgans, a low, long dark shape rushing over the snow, and another behind it, and another, speeding out now into the open and swerving towards us. ''Jesus!'' I shrieked. ''Wolves!''

East yelled something I couldn't hear and the sled rocked horribly as he bore on his offside rein; then we righted, and as I gazed over the side, the hellish baying broke out almost directly behind us. There they were---five of them. I could see the leader toss up his hideous snout as he let go his evil wail, and then they put their heads down and came after us in dead silence.

I've seen horror in my time, human, animal and natural, but I don't know much worse than that memory---those dim grey shapes bounding behind us, creeping inexorably closer, until I could make out the flat, wicked heads and the snow spurting up under their loping paws. I must have been petrified, for God knows how long I just stared at them---and then my wits came back and I seized the nearest rug and flung it out to the side.

As one beast they swerved and were on it in a twinkling, tearing it among them. Only for a second, and then they were after us again---probably all the fiercer for being fooled. I grabbed another rug and hurled it, and this time they never even broke stride but shot past it, closing in on the sled. I could see the eyes behind us now, glaring in those viciously pointed heads, with their open jaws and gleaming teeth and the vapour panting out between them. The leader was a bare five yards behind, bounding along like some hound of hell; I grabbed another rug, balled it, prayed and flung it at him, and for one joyous moment it enveloped him; he stumbled, recovered and came on again, and East sang out from the box to hold tight. The sled rocked and we were shooting along between high snowbanks on either side, with those five devils barely a leap from us---and suddenly they were falling back, slackening their lope, and I couldn't believe my eyes, and then a cabin flashed by on the right, and then another, with beautiful, wonderful light in its windows, and the five awful shapes were fading into the gloom and we were gliding up a street, between rows of cottages on either side, and as East brought the sled slowly to a halt I collapsed, half-done, on the seat. Valla, I remember, muttered something and turned over in her rugs.

You would not think much of Genitchi. I dare say, or its single mean street, but to me Piccadilly itself couldn't have looked better. It was five minutes before I crawled out and East and I faced the curious stares of the folk coming out of the cabins; the horses were hanging in their traces and we had no difficulty in convincing them that we needed a change. There was a post station at the end of the street, beside a bridge, and a drunk postmaster who, after much swearing and cajoling, was persuaded to produce three fairly fleabitten brutes: East wondered if we should rest for a few hours and go on with our own nags refreshed, but I said no---let's be off while the going's good. So when we had got some few items of bread and sausage and cheese from the postmaster's wife, and a couple of female garments for Valla to wear when she woke up, we put the new beasts to and prepared to take the road again after a short rest.

It was a dismal prospect. Beyond the bridge, which spanned a frozen canal, we could see the Arrow of Arabat, a long, bleak tongue of snow-covered land running south like a huge railway embankment into the Sea of Azov. The sea proper, which was frozen---at least as far out as we could see---lay to the left; on the right of the causeway lies a stinking inland lagoon, called the Sivache, which is many miles wide in places but narrows down as you proceed along the Arrow, until it peters away altogether where the causeway reaches Arabat, on the eastern end of the Crimea. The lagoon seems to be too foul to freeze entirely, even in a Russian winter, and the stench from it would poison an elephant.

We were just preparing to set off when Valla woke up. She took a few nips of brandy, refused the clothes we had got for her and curled up in the furs again.

The rest did me little good. The scare we'd had from the wolves and the perils ahead had my nerves jangling like fiddlestrings. The moon was up by now, so we should have light enough to ensure we didn't stray from the causeway; I took the driver's seat and we slid away over the bridge and out onto the Arrow of Arabat.

For the first few miles it was quite wide, and as I kept to the eastern side, there was a great expanse of hummocky snow to my right. But then the causeway gradually narrowed to perhaps half a mile, so that it was like driving along a very broad raised road, with the ground falling away sharply on either side to the snow-covered frozen waters of the Azov and the Sivache lagoon: the salty charnel reek was awful and even the horses didn't like it, tossing their heads and pulling awkwardly. We passed two empty post stations, and after about four hours East took the reins for what we hoped would be the last spell into Arabat.

I climbed into the back of the sled and made all the fastenings secure as we started off again and was preparing to curl up on the back seat when Valla stirred sleepily in the darkness, murmuring. ''Harr-ee?'' as she stretched restlessly in her pile of furs on the floor. I knelt down beside her and took her hand, but when I spoke to her she just mumbled and turned over; the laudanum and brandy still had her pretty well foxed and there was no sense to be got out of her. It struck me she might be conscious enough to enjoy some company, though, so I slipped a hand beneath the furs and encountered warm, plump flesh; the touch of it sent the blood pumping in my head.

''Valla, my love.'' I whispered, just to be respectable; I could smell the sweet musky perfume of her skin, even over the brandy. I stroked her belly and she moaned softly, and when I felt upwards and cupped her breast she turned towards me, her lips wet against my cheek. I was shaking as I put my mouth on hers, and then in a trice I was under the rugs, wallowing away like a sailor on shore leave; and half-drunk as she was, she clung to me passionately. It was an astonishing business, for the furs were crackling with electricity, shocking me into unprecedented efforts---I thought I knew everything in the galloping line, but I'll swear there's no more alarming way of doing it than under a pile of skins in a sled skimming through the freezing Russian night; it's like performing on a bed of firecrackers.

Engrossing as the novelty was, it was also exhausting, and I must have dozed off afterwards with Valla purring in her unconsciousness beside me. And then I became dimly conscious that the sled was slowing down and gliding to a halt; I sat up, wondering what the blazes was wrong, buttoning myself hastily, and then I heard East jump down. I stuck my head out; he was standing by the sled, his head cocked, listening.

''Hush!'' says he, sharply. ''Do you hear anything behind us?''

I scrambled out onto the snow and we stood there, in the silent moonlight, straining our ears. Was there the tiniest murmur from somewhere back on the causeway, an indistinct but regular sound, softly up and down, up and down? I felt the hairs rise on my neck--- it couldn't be wolves, not here, but what was it, then? We stared back along the causeway; it was very narrow now, only a couple of hundred yards across, but we had just come onto a stretch where it began to swerve gently towards the east and it was difficult to make out anything in the gloom beyond the bend about a quarter of a mile behind us. Snow was falling gently, brushing our faces.

''Whatever it is, or isn't, there's no sense waiting here for it!'' says I. ''How far d'you reckon we are from Arabat?''

''Six miles, perhaps---surely not much more. Once there, we should be all right. According to that book, there are little hills and gullies beyond the town where we can lose ourselves.''

I listened again and there was a sound, a sound that I knew all too well. Very faintly, somewhere behind us, there was a gentle but now distinct drumming, and a tiny tinkling with it. There were horsemen on the causeway!

''Quick!'' I shouted. ''They're after us! Move those horses!''

He tumbled up onto the box, and as I swung myself onto the runner mounting, he cracked his whip and we slid forward across the snow. I clung to the side of the sled, peering back fearfully. We were gathering speed now, cracking along at a good clip, and I was just about to swing myself under the cover---but I paused for another look back along the causeway and what I saw nearly made me lose my hold. Very dimly through the falling flakes I could just make out the causeway bend, and there, moving out onto the straight on this side of it, was a dark, indistinct mass---too big and irregular to be anything like a sled. And then the moonlight caught a score of twinkling slivers in the gloom and I yelled at East in panic: ''It's cavalry--- horsemen! They're after us, man!''

At the same time they must have seen us, for a muffled cry reached my ears, and now I could see the mass was indeed made up of separate pieces---a whole troop of them, coming on at a steady gallop, and even as I watched, they lengthened their stride, closing the distance. I couldn't see whether they were hussars or dragoons or what, but I had a feeling they were heavies. Pray God they might be! I swung under the cover and threw myself onto the back seat, peering out through the window flap. No, they weren't closing the distance---not yet. They were fanned out on the causeway as far as they could---good riding, that, for in column the rear files would have been ploughing into the churned snow of the men in front. Trust Russian cavalry to know about that.

But if they weren't gaining, they weren't dropping back, either. There was nothing in it---it's a queer thing, but where a horseman can easily overhaul a coach, or even a racing phaeton, a good sled on firm snow is another matter entirely. A horse with a load on his back makes heavy weather in snow, but unladen he can spank a sled along at nearly full gallop. But how long could our beasts keep up their present pace?

I couldn't stand it. I plunged to the side of the sled, stuck my head out and bawled at East: ''They're closing, you fool! Faster! Can't you stir those bloody cattle?''

He shot a glance over his shoulder, cracked on the reins and cried: ''It's no go . . horses are almost played out! Can't. . . . We're too heavy! Throw out some weight . . . the food . . . anything!''

I looked back: They were certainly gaining now, for the pale blobs of their faces were dimly visible even through the driving snow. They couldn't be much more than 200 yards away and one of 'em was shouting; I could just catch the voice but not the words.

''Damn you!'' I roared. ''Russian bastards!'' And fell back into the sled, scrabbling for our supplies, to hurl them out and lighten the sled. It was ridiculous---a few loaves and a couple of bottles---but out they went, anyway, and not a scrap of difference did it make. The cover? If I let it go, it would cut down the wind resistance, at least. I struggled with the buckles, stiff with the cold as they were, bruising my fingers and swearing feebly. There were eight of them, two to each side, and I just had the wit to undo the rear ones first and the front ones last, whereupon the whole thing flew off, billowing away before it flopped onto the snow. Perhaps it helped a trifle, but nothing like enough---they were still closing, almost imperceptibly.

I groaned and cursed, while the freezing wind whipped at me, casting about for anything else to jettison. The furs? We'd freeze without them, and Valla didn't have a stitch------ Valla! For an instant, even I was appalled---but only for an instant. There was eight stone of her if there was an ounce---her loss would lighten us splendidly! And that wasn't all---they'd be bound to check, at least, if she came bouncing over the back. Gallant Russian gentlemen, after all, don't abandon naked girls in the snow.

I stooped over her, fighting to balance myself in the rocking sled. She was still unconscious, wrapped in her furs, looking truly lovely with her silver hair shining in the moonlight, murmuring a little in her half-drunken sleep. I heaved her upright, keeping the fur round her as best I could, and dragged her to the back seat. She nestled against me, and even in that moment of panic I found myself kissing her goodbye---well, it seemed the least I could do. Her lips were chill, with the snow driving past us in the wind: there'll be more than your lips cold in a moment, thinks I.

''Goodbye, little one,'' says I. ''Sleep tight,'' and I slipped my arm beneath her legs and bundled her over the back in one clean movement; there was a flash of white limbs as the furs fell away from her, and then she was sprawling on the snow behind us. The sled leaped forward as though a brake had been released, East yelled with alarm and I could guess he was clinging to the reins for dear life; I gazed back at the receding dark blur where the fur lay beside Valla in the snow. She was invisible in the white confusion, but I saw the riders suddenly swerve out from the centre, a thin shout reached me, and then the leader and his immediate flankers were reining up, the riders on the wings were checking, too, but then they came on, rot them, while a little knot of the centre men halted and gathered and I saw a couple of them swinging down from their saddles before they were lost in the snowy night.

''On, Scud, on!'' I shouted, heaving myself up beside East on the box.

''We're leaving 'em! We'll beat them yet!''

''What was it?'' he cried. ''What did you throw out?''

''Useless baggage!'' shouts I. ''Never mind, man! Drive for your life!''

''What baggage? We had none!'' He glanced over his shoulder, at where the horsemen were dim shapes now in the distance, and his eyes fell on the sled.

''Is Valla all----'' and then he positively screamed. ''Valla! Valla! My God!'' He reeled in his seat and I had to grab the reins as they slipped from his fingers. ''You---you---no, you couldn't! Flashman, you------''

''Hold on, you infernal fool!'' I yelled. ''It's too late now!'' He made a grab at the reins and I had to sweep him back by main force as I clutched the ribbons in one hand. ''Stop it, damn you, or you'll have us sunk as well!''

''Rein up!'' he bawled, struggling with me. ''Rein up---must go back! My God, Valla! You filthy, inhuman brute---oh. God!''

''You idiot!'' I shouted, lunging with all my weight to keep him off. ''It was her or all of us!'' Divine inspiration seized me. ''Have you forgotten what we're doing, curse you? We've got to get to Raglan with our news! If we don't---what about Ignatieff and his cursed plans? By heaven, East, I don't forget my duty, even if you do, and I tell you I'd heave a thousand Russian sluts into the snow for my country's sake!'' And 10,000 for my own, but that's no matter. I snapped the reins, blinking against the driving snow as we sped along, and then stole a glance behind---nothing but whirling snow over the empty causeway; our pursuers were lost in the distance, but they'd still be there.

East was clinging to the box as we rocked along, a man stricken. He kept repeating Valla's name over and over again and groaning. ''Oh, it's too much! Too high a price---God, have you no pity, Flashman? Are you made of stone?''

I decided a little manly rave would do no harm---not that I gave a damn what East thought, but it would keep him quiet and stop him doing anything rash even now. ''My God, East! Have you any notion what this night's work has cost me? D'you think it won't haunt me forever? D'you think I ... I have no heart?'' I dashed my knuckles across my eyes in a fine gesture. ''Anyway, it's odds she'll be all right---they're her people, after all, and they'll wrap her up nice as ninepence.''

He heaved a great shuddering breath. ''Oh, I pray to God it may be so! But the horror of that moment---it's no good. I'm not like you! I have not the iron will---I am not of your metal!''

You're right there, boy, thinks I, turning again to look back. Still nothing, and then through the dimness ahead there was a faint glimmer of light, growing to a cluster, and the causeway was narrowing to nothing more than a dyke, so that I had to slow the sled for fear we should pitch down the banks to the frozen sea. There was a big square fort looming up on our right and a straggle of buildings on the left, whence the lights came; between, the road ran clear onto broad snow fields. I snapped the whip, calling to the horses, and we drove through never heeding a voice that called to us from the fort wall overhead.

''Bravo!'' cries I, ''we're almost there!'' Behind us, Arabat and its fort were fading into the dark; the glimmer of the lights was diminishing as we breasted the first gentle slope and made for a broad gully in the rising ground. I reined in gently as we went down the reverse slope---and then the lead horse stumbled, whinnying, and came slithering down; the nearside beast swerved sharply, wrenching the reins from my hands, the sled slued horribly, struck something with a fearful jar, East went flying over the side and I was hurled headlong forward. I went somersaulting through the air, roaring, felt my back strike the rump of the nearside horse, and then I was plunging into the snow. I landed on my back and there above me was the sled, hanging poised; I screamed and flung up my hands to save my head. The sled came lumbering over, slowly, almost, on top of me, a fiery pain shot through my left side, a crushing weight was across my chest; I shrieked again, and then it settled, pinning me in the snow like a beetle on a card.

One of the horses was floundering about in the snow, neighing madly, and then I heard East's voice: ''Flashman! Flashman, are you all right?''

''I'm pinned!'' I cried. ''The sled---get the damned thing off me! Ah, God, my back's broken!''

He came blundering through the snow and knelt beside me. He put his shoulder to the sled, heaving for all he was worth, but he might as well have tried to shift St. Paul's. It didn't give so much as an inch.

''Rot you, it's crushing my guts out!'' I cried. ''Oh, God---I know my spine's gone---I can feel it! I'm------''

''Silence!'' he hissed, and I could see he was listening, staring back towards Arabat. ''Oh, no! Flashman---they're coming! I can hear the horsemen on the snow!'' He flung himself at the sled, pushing futilely. ''Oh, give me strength, God, please! Please!'' He strove, thrusting at the sled and groaning.

I cried, ''What are you doing, man? What is it?'' For he was standing up now, staring back over the mouth of the gully towards Arabat; for half a minute he stood motionless, while I babbled and pawed at the wreck, and then he looked down at me and his voice was steady.

''It's no go, old fellow. I know I can't move it. And they're coming. I can just see them, dimly.'' He dropped on one knee. ''Flashman---I'm sorry. I'll have to leave you. Oh, my dear comrade---if I could give my life, I would, but------''

''Rot you!'' cries I. ''My God, you can't leave me! Push the bloody thing---help me, man! I'm dying!''

''Oh, God!'' he said. ''This is agony! First Valla---now you! But I must get the news through---you know I must. You have shown me the way of duty, old chap---depend upon it, I shan't fail! And I'll tell them---when I get home! Tell them how you gave. . . . But I must go!''

''Scud,'' says I, babbling, ''for the love of------''

But I don't think he so much as heard me. He bent forward and kissed me on the forehead and I felt one of his manly bloody tears on my brow.

And then he was ploughing away over the snow, to where the nearside horse was standing; he pulled the traces free of its head and hurried off, pulling it along into the underbrush, with me bleating after him. ''Scud! For pity's sake, don't desert me! You can't---not your old schoolfellow, you callous son of a bitch! Please, stop, come back! I'm dying, damn you!''

But he was gone and I was pinned, weeping, beneath that appalling weight. Then I heard the soft thumping of hooves on the snow, and a shout, and those cursed Russian voices, muffled, from the mouth of the gully.

''Poslushatyeh! Ah, tam---skoro! [Listen! Ah, there---quickly!]''

The jingle of harness was close now and the pad of hooves---a horse neighed on the other side of the sled and I squeezed my eyes shut, moaning. Then there was the snorting of a horse almost directly over my face and I shrieked and opened my eyes. Two horsemen were sitting looking down, fur-wrapped figures with those stringy Cossack caps pulled down over their brows.

''Help!'' I croaked. ''Pomogatyeh, pajalusta! [Help, please!]''

One of them leaned forward. ''On syeryoznoh ranyen [He is badly hurt],'' says he, and they both laughed, as at a good joke. Then, to my horror, the speaker drew his nagaika from his saddlebow, doubled it back and leaned down, over me.

''Nye za chto [Not at all],'' says he, leering. His hand went up, I tried in vain to jerk my head aside, a searing pain seemed to cleave my skull, and then the dark sky rushed in on me.

This is the second of three installments of a condensed version of ''Flashman at the Charge.'' The third installment will appear in the June issue.

1Whatever may be said of his opinions, Flashman's information about the plight of the Russian serfs in the 1850s is entirely accurate and is borne out by several other contemporary authorities. The best of these are perhaps Baron August von Haxthausen, whose ''The Russian Empire'' appeared in 1856, and Shirley Brooks, in ''The Russians of the South'' (1854). They also corroborate his descriptions of Russian life in general, as does ''The Englishwoman in Russia,'' by ''a Lady ten years resident in that country,'' published in 1855.

2Captain Count Nicholas Pavlovitch Ignatieff was later to become one of Russia's most brilliant agents in the Far East. He served in China, undertook daring missions into central Asia and was also for a time military attaché in London. There is evidence that early in the Crimean War he was serving on the Baltic, and this must have been shortly before his encounter with Flashman. He was 22 at this time.

3The commander of Prince Wittgenstein's hussars in 1837 was, in fact, Colonel Pencherjevsky.

4If anything, Flashman's description of the punishments meted out to Russian serfs by their owners appears to be on the mild side. The works cited earlier in these notes contain examples of fearful cruelty and the carelessness with which extraordinary penalties were sometimes imposed.

5It is interesting that Pencherjevsky had heard of Marx at this time, for although the great revolutionary had already gained an international notoriety, his influence was not to be felt in Russia for many years. Non-Communist agitators were, however, highly active in the country, and no doubt to the count they all looked alike.

6Flashman seems to suggest that this incident took place in February 1855. If it did, then Tsar Nicholas I had only weeks, and possibly days, to live: He died on March second in St. Petersburg, after influenza which had lasted about a fortnight. There is no evidence that he visited the south in the closing weeks of his life; on the other hand, Flashman's account seems highly circumstantial. Possibly he has confused the dates and Nicholas went to Starotorsk earlier than February. However, anyone scenting a mystery here may note that while the tsar died on March second, he was last seen in public on February 22 at an infantry review (see E. H. Nolan's ''Illustrated History of the War Against Russia'').

7The Khruleff and Diugamel plans were only two in a long list of proposed Russian invasions of British India. As far back as 1801, Tsar Paul, hoping to replace British rule with his own, agreed to a joint Franco-Russian invasion through Afghanistan (Napoleon was at that time in Egypt, and the French government were to pave the invaders' way by sending ''rare objects'' to be ''distributed with tact'' among native chiefs on the line of march). The Russian part of the expedition actually got under way, but with the death of the tsar and the British victory at Copenhagen, the scheme was abandoned.

8The soul tax was simply a tax on each male, of 86 silver kopecks annually (see J. Blum's ''Lord and Peasant in Russia''). If a serf died, his family had to continue to pay the tax until he was officially declared dead at the next census. Blocking the family stove was a common inducement to pay.

9It is probably mere coincidence, but one of V. I. Lenin's immediate ancestors bore the surname Blank.

10The serf rising at Starotorsk may have astonished Flashman, but such rebellions were exceedingly common (as he himself remarks elsewhere in his narrative). More than 700 such revolts took place in Russia during the 30 years of Nicholas I's reign.