Flashman in the Great Game

the beautiful rani was inside that doomed fortress and she had to be saved--even if old flashy got torn apart in the process

Concluding a new adventure satire

George MacDonald Fraser

Synopsis: It was the summer of 1856 and the prime minister needed a brave man to go on a secret mission to India to report on rumours of impending mutiny among the sepoy Indian troops in the city of Jhansi--and to learn if the sinister Russian Count Ignatieff was behind it all. And who was the right man for the job but Colonel Harry Flashman, hero of Balaclava in the public eyes (and the luckiest coward alive in his own).

Another aspect of his mission was to make friends with the ruler of Jhansi--who, to his lecherous delight, turned out to be a young and beautiful Rani, quite susceptible to Flashman's whiskery charm. One night, when he was drinking with Ilderim Khan, an old companion from Afghanistan days, Flashman was bidden to a rendezvous with the Rani. After spectacular heroics in bed, he dozed and awoke to find a pair of villainous Indians about to do him in with a garrotte.

By the best of luck, Ilderim had come to the rescue and, questioning the surviving Thug, discovered that Ignatieff had instigated the attack. Flashman now had to go into hiding and--on Ilderim's inspired suggestion--disguised himself as a Pathan and rode off to join the native cavalry at the garrison of Meerut.

He managed to pass muster as a mountain tribesman, but he also attracted the attention of a British colonel who assigned the supposed Makarram Khan a job as major-domo of his bungalow. This led to some long rides in the countryside with (and then atop) the voluptuous Mrs. Leslie.

Meanwhile, the Indian troops were sullen at rumours of a new rifle cartridge greased with cow and pig fat. The general ordered a firing parade to demonstrate its harmlessness, but all except five of the troopers refused it. Outraged, the general court-martialled and jailed them.

Returning one May evening from a ride with Mrs. Leslie, Flashman found Meerut in chaos. The sepoys were in full mutiny, releasing the prisoners and murdering the British in their homes. Sickened and scared, Flashman rode off in the night.

After wandering around in the devastated countryside, he made for Jhansi and managed to find Ilderim, still loyal to the British and one of the few survivors of another sepoy mutiny at Jhansi. Together, they joined a troop of roving irregular cavalry under a British captain named Rowbotham and headed for the town of Cawnpore, where General Wheeler was holding an entrenchment against a sepoy army.

Once inside the makeshift fort, Flashman found that he'd gone from the frying pan into the fire and, after a bloody siege, Wheeler at last accepted terms of safe conduct to march his battered garrison out. But the Indians had other plans--once the English were embarked on riverboats, the sepoys began to slaughter them. Only one boat, with Flashman aboard, got away. There followed a downstream journey full of horrors--an attack by half-wild jungle people and a swim in the crocodile-infested river--which ended at last when Flashman and four other half-dead survivors were saved by a native ruler who had remained on the British side.

[Recovered and back with the British army as an intelligence staff colonel, Flashman went to Lucknow with the first relief force. There he became an unwilling volunteer--disguised again as a Pathan--to slip through the sepoy lines with a message for Sir Colin Campbell. His companion was Thomas Henry Kavanagh, a mad Irishman with ambitions to be a hero, according to Flashman's disgusted description. After they'd lost their way several times and Flashman had pulled Kavanagh out of several canals, they reached Campbell. Thereafter, Flashman relaxed again, as a staff intelligence officer in a camp near Cawnpore, where a new British army was assembling.]

That Winter, we had begun to make things so hot for the pandies along the Grand Trunk that the bulk of their power was being forced south into the Gwalior country, where Tantia Topi had taken his army and where Jhansi lay. In our intelligence reports, I began to see increasing references to Lakshmibai--"the rebel Ranee," as they called her now--who had cast her lot with the mutinous princes. At first, that shocked me, but when I thought of her grievances against us and that lovely, dark face so grimly set as she said, "Mera Jhansi denge nay!"--I won't give up my Jhansi!--it wasn't so surprising, really.

She'd have to give it up fast enough, with our southern armies under Sir Hugh Rose already advancing north towards Gwalior. Still, when my thoughts turned to her, I couldn't reconcile this world of burning and massacre with my memory of that bewitching figure swinging gently to and fro in that mirrored fairy palace. That was enough to set the flutters going in my innards. But it wasn't only lust--when I thought of those slanting eyes and the grave little smile and her smooth, dusky arms along the swing, I was conscious of an empty longing. What I needed was two weeks' steady rogering at her to get these mooncalf yearnings out of my mind. But, of course, there was no chance for that now.

I'd more or less let all that go to the back of my mind one night when I was sitting in the dusk of a Lucknow garden, very much at ease, smoking and swigging port with some other officers and listening to the distant thump of the night guns, when destiny, in the unlikely shape of General Mansfield, tapped me on the arm. "Sir Colin Campbell wants you directly," says he.

I didn't think twice about it but pitched my cheroot into the fire and sauntered through the lines to the chief's tent, drinking in the warm night air with sleepy comfort. Even when he greeted me with "How well d'ye know the Rani of Jhansi?" I wasn't unduly surprised--there'd been a dispatch in about the Jhansi campaign that very day.

I said that I'd known her fairly well; we had talked a great deal together.

"And her city--her fortress?" asks Campbell.

"Passably, sir. I was never in her fort proper. Our meetings were at her palace. And I'm not overfamiliar with the city itself."

"More familiar than Sir Hugh Rose, though, I'll be bound," says he, tapping a paper in front of him. "And that's his own opeenion in this dispatch." I didn't care for that and I didn't care for the way Campbell was looking at me, either.

"This Rani," says he at length. "What's she like?"

I began to answer that she was a capable ruler and nobody's fool, but he interrupted me with one of his barbarous Scotch noises, "Taghaway wi' ye! Is she pretty, man?"

I admitted that she was strikingly beautiful and he grinned and shook his grizzly head. "Aye," says he, squinting at me, "ye're a strange man, Flashman. I'll confess tae ye, I've even-on had my doots aboot ye--don't ask me why, for I don't know. This much I'm certain of, ye always win. God kens how--and I'm glad I don't ken mysel'. But there--Sir Hugh needs ye at Jhansi and I'm sending ye south."

I didn't know what to think of this, so I just stood and waited anxiously.

"This mutiny business is aboot done. It's a question of scattering the last armies here in Oudh and Rohilkhand and there in Bundelkhand. Jhansi is one of the last hard nuts tae he cracked. This bizzum of a Rani has ten thousand men and stout city walls. Sir Hugh will have her under siege by the time ye get there and nae doot he'll have tae take the place by storm. But that's not enough--which is why ye, wi' your particular diplomatic knowledge of the Rani, are essential. Ye see, Lord Canning, Sir Hugh and mysel' are agreed on one thing and your experience of this wumman may be the key to it." He looked me carefully in the eye. "Whatever else befalls, we must be careful tae capture the Rani alive."

If she'd been as ugly as sin, if a scrawny, elderly Rani were to be bayoneted in the taking of Jhansi, no one would give a damn. But Canning, our enlightened governor general, was a sentimental tool, alarmed at the vengeance and bloodshed that generals like Neill and Havelock had already taken. He guessed that sooner or later, the righteous wrath of Britons at home would die down and a revulsion would set in--which, of course, was to happen. My guess is that he feared that the death of a young and beautiful rebel princess would tip the balance of public conscience and he didn't want the pres depicting her as some Indian Joan of Arc. Mind you, I was all for that--if it could take place without any dangerous intervention on my part. Jhansi wasn't a lucky place for me.

So, with a strong escort of Pathan horse, I took as long as I decently could riding the 200 miles from Lucknow and it wasn't until the last week in March that I sighted that fort of ill omen on its frowning rock.

Rose was just getting himself settled in by then, battering away at the city defences with his guns, his army circling the walls in a gigantic ring, with observation posts and cavalry pickets all prettily sited to bottle it up.

He was a (continued on page 102)Elashman(continued from page 98) good soldier, Rose, and he needed to be--Jhansi looked massive and impregnable under the brazen sun, from its outworks to its walls to the red rebel banner floating lazily above the fort. Outside the walls, the dusty plain had been swept clear of every scrap of cover and the rebel batteries thundered out in reply to our gunners. Inside were 11,000 troops, ready to fight to the finish. A tough nut to crack, as Campbell had said.

"We'll have them out in a week, no fears about that," was Rose's verdict. He was another Scotsman (India was crawling with them, as always), brisk and bright-eyed and spry--and less objectionable than most diplomat-soldiers. He was new to India, but you'd never have guessed it from his easy confidence and dandy air.

"Yes, a week at most," says he and pointed out how he had sited his left and right attacks against the strongest points in the rebel defences, where the redhot shot from our guns were keeping the pandy fire parties busy quelling the flames, some of which you could see flickering craxily through the heat haze. "Frontal night assault as soon as the breaches are big enough, and then"--he snapped his telescope shut--"bloody work. But the question is: How do we preserve her ladyship in all that carnage? Would she personally surrender, d'you suppose?"

I looked about me from the knoll on which we stood with his staff officers. Below, the siege guns shook the ground and the smoke wraithed back towards us as the gunners crawled round their pieces like ants to reload. On either side, as far as the eye could see, the cavalry pickets were strung out--the blue jackets of the Light Dragoons and the grey khaki of the Hyderabad troopers' coats, dusty with the new curry-powder dye. Two miles behind us, near the ruins of the old cantonment, were the endless tent lines of the infantry brigades, waiting till the guns had done their work. To the front, the jumble of distant houses stretched in the smoky haze up to the mighty crag of the fortress. She'd be there--perhaps in her cool durbar room, playing with her pet monkeys; perhaps she was with her chiefs, looking out at the army that was going to swallow her up and reduce her fairy palace to rubble.

"Surrender?" asks I. "No, I doubt if she will."

"We've tried proclamation, of course," says Rose, "but, since we can't guarantee immunity to her followers, we might as well save our breath. Still, she might not be eager to see her civilians exposed to the assault, what? I mean, being a woman. What is she like, by the way?"

"Extremely lovely," says I, "uses French scent, is kind to animals, fences like a Hungarian hussar, pray for several hours each day, recreates herself on a white-silk swing in a room full of mirrors, gives afternoon tea parties for society ladies and hangs criminals up in the sun by their thumbs. Useful horsewoman, too."

"What about lovers, hey?" asks one of the staff, sweating and horny-eyed. "They say she keeps a hareem of muscular young bucks, primed with love potions--"

"She didn't tell me," says I, "and I didn't ask her."

"Well," says Rose, "we must consider what's to be done about her."

That was how I employed myself for the next three days while the guns and mortars smashed away in fine style, opening a breach in the south wall, burning up the repair barricades and blowing most of their heavy gun ports to rubble. By the 29th, Rose was drawing up final orders for his infantry stormers and still we had reached no firm plan for capturing Lakshmibai unharmed. It was all too easy for me to imagine the palace with bloody corpses on that quilted Chinese carpet, the mirrors shattered by shot and yelling looters bayoneting everything that stood in their way. God knows, it was nothing new to me--I'd lent a hand in my time, when it was safe to do so--but these would be her possessions and I was sentimental enough to be sorry for that. By George, I'd got her into my blood stream when I began worrying about her damned furniture.

Try as I might, I could see nothing for it but to send a picked platoon straight to the palace with orders to secure her unharmed at any price. By God, though, that was one detail I'd have to avoid. My job would be her reception and safekeeping after the slaughter was over: Flashy, the stern and sorrowful saviour, shielding her from staff wallopers with dirty minds, that was the ticket. She'd have to be escorted away, perhaps to Calcutta, and on that journey she'd be grateful for a friendly face among her enemies. I thought of her pavilion and that gleaming bronze body undulating towards me to the sound of music--we'll have dancing every night in our private hackery, thinks I, and if I'm not down to 12 stone by the time we reach Calcutta, it won't be for want of nocturnal exercise.

But Rose was sceptical about the idea of the special platoon, as it turned out. "Too uncertain," says he. "We need something concerted and executed before the battle has even reached her palace. We must have her snug before then."

"Well, I don't for the life of me see how you'd do that. Anyone going in before the troops would never get a hundred yards through the streets--let alone past her Pathan palace guard."

Rose picked thoughtfully at his cheroot. "Force wouldn't serve, I agree. But diplomacy? What d'you think, Lyster?"

This was young Harry Lyster, Rose's galloper and the only other person present at our talk. "Bribery, perhaps--if we could smuggle a proposal to some of her officers."

"They've eaten her salt," says I. "You couldn't buy 'em." I was far from sure of that, but I wanted to quash all this talk of secret messages. I'd heard it too often before and I know who always finishes up sneaking through the dark with his bowels gurgling and his hair standing on end. "I'm afraid it comes down to a special platoon, sir, with a good native officer--"

"Counsel of despair, Flashman." Rose shook his head decisively. "Now, here's a possibility--storm the city as we intend, but leave a bolt hole. If we draw off our pickets from the Orcha gate and when the lady sees her city's doomed, I'll be much surprised if she don't make a run for it. She'll break for the open and we'll be waiting for her on the Orcha road. What d'you say, gentlemen?"1

Well, it suited me, although I thought he underrated her subtlety. But Lyster was nodding agreement and Rose went on, "Yes, I think we'll try that as a long shot. But it's still not enough. We must play every card in our hand and it would be folly not to use our trump." He turned and snapped a pointing finger at me. "You, Flashman."

I choked over my glass and covered my dismay with a shuddering cough. "I, sir? How, sir?" I tried to get my breath back.

"I don't suppose there's a white man living who has been on closer terms with her than you--isn't that so? Now, a private offer, secretly conveyed to her with my word of honour and Lord Canning's attached to it--especially one brought by a British officer she could trust. You follow me?"

All too well I followed him; I could see the abyss of ruin and despair opening before my feet once again. And the bright-eyed lunatic eagerly went on, "She doesn't have to surrender Jhansi, even--just her own person. How can she refuse? That's it!" cries he, smacking the table. "She can pretend to her own folk that she's trying to escape. No one except us would ever know it was a put-up business."

Lyster was frowning. "Will she leave her people to their fate, though?"

I seized on this like a drowning man. (continued on page 198)Flashman(continued from page 102) "She wouldn't betray 'em, never!" says I emphatically.

Rose stared at me in disappointment. "I can't credit that. She ain't European royally, you know! These black rulers don't care a snuff for their subjects. We have nothing to lose by trying, at any rate." He tapped the table, grinning at me, bursting with his own cleverness. "Flashman, didn't I say that you were our trump card? You're one of the few men who can get inside Jhansi and into her presence as a native--with no one the wiser!" He sat back and laughed. "What d'ye think they're calling you down in Bombay these days? The Pall Mall Pathan!"

There are times when you know it absolutely ain't worth struggling any longer. Rose was just the most recent in a long line of enthusiastic madmen who, at one time or another, had declared that I was just the chap they were looking for to undertake some ghastly adventure. I made one more feeble excuse by pointing out that I no longer had a beard, but Rose brushed that aside as unimportant, poured me another brandy and began to elaborate his idiot plan.

Lakshmibai was to make her escape through the Orcha gate at the very height of our attack, he said, and added, "But you must say nothing about that gate until she has accepted the offer. If she does refuse our plan--well, she may still be tempted to use a bolt hole in the last resort. So we shall nab her anyway," he concluded smugly.

"And if she does refuse?"

"My guess," he said airily, "is that she'll try to keep you as a hostage. Anyway," says he, clapping me on the arm, "I know you've never counted risk yet--I saw you at Balaclava charging with the Heavies and going in with the Lights as well!" And, do you know, he actually sat laughing at me in admiration? It would have turned your stomach.

So there I sat and punished the brandy while I tried to balance the odds in my mind. I remembered our night in the pavilion and I thought, No, she wouldn't do me any harm. And yet, there was the Jhansi massacre--how deep had she been in that? Who knew what went on in the Indian mind? Was she as cruel and treacherous as the rest of them? I couldn't say--but I'd find out when I came face to face with her. And, just for an instant, I felt a leap of eagerness in my chest at the thought of seeing her once more.

I'll say this for Hugh Rose--along with his fiendish ingenuity for dreaming up dangers for me, he had a formidable talent for organisation. It took him a good 30 seconds to dream up a fool-proof way of getting me safe inside the city. I would have the next day to prepare my disguise with skin dye and the rest, and the following night he would loose a squadron of Hyderabad cavalry in a sudden raid on the breach in the wall. They would create a hell of a row and then withdraw in good order, leaving behind in the rubble one native bad-mash of unsavoury appearance: to wit, Colonel Flashman, late of the 17th Lancers and the General Staff. I was to lie low for a half hour, it seemed, and after that, all I had to do was tool up the streets to the palace and knock on the door, like Barnacle Bill.

Thus it was I found myself, attired in a filthy Third Cavalry uniform, with the Hyderabad troopers round me in the gloom, Rose clasping my hand; then the whispered order, the slow, muffled advance, with only the snorting of the horses and the creak of leather to mark our passing towards that looming, distant wall. Behind it was the dull, crimson glow of the city and the broad gap in the wall where the watch fires twinkled and a few silhouettes moved to and fro.

Far away to our left, the night batteries were firing as a diversion. Even through my genuine funk, I could feel that strange tremour of excitement every horse soldier knows as the squadrons move forward silently in the gloom, slowly and ponderously, bump-bump-bump at the walk, knee to knee, one hand on the bridle, t'other on the hilt of the lampblacked sabre, ears straining for the first cry of alarm. How often I'd known it and been terrified!

The crack of a rifle, a distant yell and then the thunderous roar of the rissaldar, "Aye-hee! Squah-drahn--charge!" The dark mass on either side seemed to leap forward, and then I was thundering along, flat down against my pony's flanks, as we tore across the last furlong. The Hyderabadis screamed like fury as they spread out, except for the four who remained bunched ahead and on either side of me as a protective screen. Beyond them, I could see the smoky fires in the breach, a rubble-strewn gap 100 yards wide with a crazy barricade across it; pin points of flame were spotting the gloom and shots whistled overhead. Then the first riders were jumping the barricade, sabres swinging. My front gallopers swerved in among the jumble of fallen masonry, howling like dervishes; I saw one of them sabre down a pandy who thrust at him with musket and bayonet and another rode slap into a big, white-dhotied fellow who was springing at him with a spear.

I jerked my beast's head round and, scrambling over stones and plaster, made for the shadows on my right just as two Hyderabadis surged past me. Under their cover, I managed to reach the lee of a ruined house while the clash of steel, the crack of musketry and the yells sounded behind me. Close by the house, there was a tangle of bushes and I rolled neatly out of the saddle, crawled frantically under them and lay there, panting.

I'd dropped my sabre, but I had a stout knife in my boot and a revolver at my waist under my shirt. I waited for three or four minutes while the pande-monium continued. Then it died down to a babble of insults and a few shots directed at our retreating cavalry as comparative peace descended on that small corner of Jhansi. So far, so good--but, as some clever lad once said, we hadn't gone very far.

About a quarter of an hour later, I burrowed through the bushes and found myself in a narrow lane. At the corner was a watch fire with a few pandies and bazaar wallahs round it; I ambled past them, exchanging a greeting, and they didn't do more than give me an idle glance. Two minutes later, I was in the bazaar, buying a chapatty and chilli and agreeing with the booth wallah that if the sahib-log couldn't do better than the feeble skirmish just now at the breach, they'd never take Jhansi.

Although it was three in the morning, the narrow streets were as busy as if it had been noon. There were troops on the move everywhere--rebels of the 12th Native Infantry, regulars of the Rani's Mahratta army, Bhil soldiers of fortune and armed tribesmen with spiked helmets, long swords, round shields and every sort of firearm from Miniés to matchlocks. There were many townsfolk about, too, and the booths seemed to be doing a roaring trade. There was no sign of unease, as you might have expected; rather, a sense of excitement and bustle.

I fell into conversation with the booth wallah, remarking that it seemed we were holding the English very well, and finally got round to saying, "There is talk that the Rani holds a great council in the fort tonight; have you heard?"

"She did not invite me," says he sarcastically. "Nor, strangely enough, did she offer me her palace when she left it. That will be three pice, soldier."

I paid him, having learned what I wanted to know, and took the streets that led up to the fort, my knees getting shakier at each step. I reminded myself that she could hardly show violence to an envoy of the British general, and yet, when I came to the little square and gazed across at the frowning gateway, with the torches blazing over it and the red-jacketed Pathan sentries on either side, I had to fight down the temptation to scuttle back into the lanes and try to hide until it was all over. Only the certainty that these lanes would shortly be a bloody battleground sent me reluctantly on. I wound my puggaree tightly round head and chin, hiding half my face, slipped from my pocket the note that Rose had carefully prepared, walked firmly across to the sentry and demanded to see the guard commander. He came out, yawning and stretching--and who should it be but my old acquaintance who spat on shadows. I gave him the note and said, "This is for the Rani and no other. Take it to her, and quickly."

He glowered at me. "What is this, and who may you be?"

"If she wishes you to know, belike she'll tell you," I growled, squatting down in the archway. "But be sure, if you," delay, she'll have that empty head off your shoulders."

He glared and turned the note in his hands. Evidently, it impressed him-- with a red seal carrying young Lyster's family crest, it should have done--for, after an obscene enquiry about my parentage, which I ignored, he loafed off, bidding the sentries to keep an eye on me.

I waited with my heart hammering. for this was the moment when things might go badly astray. After much brain cudgelling. Rose and I had written the note in schoolboy French, which I knew the Rani understood. It said simply: "One who brought perfume and a picture is here. See him alone. Trust him." But suppose she didn't want to see me? Or might think that the best answer was to send me back to Rose in bits?

The sound of marching feet came from the gloom beyond the archway and I got to my feet, quivering. The havildar had come back with two troopers. He gave me a glowering look and motioned to the courtyard beyond, falling in beside me with the two troopers behind. We were headed across the yard to another torchlit doorway guarded by two more Pathans.

"In," growls the havildar, and I found myself in a small, vaulted guardroom. I blinked in the sudden glare of oil lamps and then my heart lurched down into my boots, for the figure peering intently towards me from the center of the room was the fat little chamberlain whom I knew from Lakshmibai's durbar.

The stupid bitch had told him who I was! Rose's fatheaded scheme had sprung a leak! "You are the Sirkar's envoy, Colonel Flashman?" He was squinting at me in consternation, as well he might, for I didn't much resemble the dandy staff officer he'd known.

"Yes," says I, "and you must take me to the Rani at once!" Sick and fearful, I peeled off my puggaree and pushed my hair back. He goggled at me, his little eyes wide in that fat face. And then something fluttered in the air between us--for an instant, I thought it was a moth--and fell to the floor with a tiny puff of sparks. It was a cigarette smoking on the flags, a long, yellow tube with a mouthpiece.

"All in good time," said Ignatieff's voice, and I spun round in horrified disbelief to stare at the doorway. He was standing there, his hand still frozen in the act of flicking away the cigarette-- Ignatieff, whom I'd supposed a thousand miles away by now, looking at me with his dreadful, cold smile and an inclination of his tawny head. "All in good time," he repeated in English as he came forward. "After we have resumed the ... . discussion? . . . which was so unfortunately interrupted at Balmoral."

•

How I've survived fourscore years without heart seizure I do not know. Perhaps I'm enured to the kind of shock I experienced then, with my innards surging up into my throat; I couldn't move but stood there with my skin crawling as he came to stand in front of me--a new Ignatieff, this, in flowered shirt and pyjama trousers and Persian boots, and with a little gingery beard adorning his chin. But the rattrap mouth was still the same, and that unwinking half-blue, half-brown eye boring into me.

"I have been anticipating this meeting," says he, "ever since I learned of your mission to India--did you know, I heard about it before you did yourself?" He gave a chilly little smile--he could never resist bragging, this one. "The secret deliberations of the astute Lord Palmerston are not so secret as he supposes. And it has been a fool's errand, has it not? But never so foolish as now. You should have been thankful to escape me ... twice? ... but you come blundering back a third time. Very well." The gotch eye seemed to harden with a brilliant light. "You will not have long to regret it."

With an effort, I got my voice back, damned shaky though it was.

"I've nothing to say to you!" cries I, as truculently as I could, and turned on the little chamberlain. "My business is with the Rani Lakshmibai--not with this . . . this renegade! I demand to see her at once! Tell her----"

Ignatieff's hand smashed across my mouth, sending me staggering, but his voice didn't rise by a fraction. "That will not be necessary," says he, and the little chamberlain dithered submissively. "Her Highness is not to be troubled for a mere spy. I shall deal with this jackal myself."

"In a pig's eye you will!" I blustered. "I'm an envoy from Sir Hugh Rose, to the Rani--not to any hole-and-corner Russian bully! You'll hinder me at your peril! Damn you, let me loose!" I roared as the two troopers suddenly grabbed my elbows. "I'm a staff officer! You can't touch me--I'm----"

"Staff officer! Envoy!" Ignatieff's words came out in that raging icy whisper that took me back to the nightmare of that verminous dungeon beneath Fort Arabat. "You crawl here in your filthy disguise, like the spy you are, and claim to be treated as an emissary? If that is what you are, why did you not come in uniform, under a flag, in open day?" His face was frozen in fury, and then the brute hit me again. "I shall tell you--because you are a dishonoured liar, whose word no one would trust! Treachery and deceit are your trade--or is it assassination this time?" His hand shot out and whipped the revolver from my waist.

"It's a lie!" I shouted. "Send to Sir Hugh Rose--he'll tell you!" I was appealing to the chamberlain. "You know me, man--tell the Rani! I demand it!"

But he just stood gaping, waiting for Ignatieff, whose sudden anger had died as quickly as it had come.

"Since Sir Hugh Rose has not honoured us with a parley, there is no reason why we should address him," says he softly. "We have to deal only with a night prowler." He gestured to the troopers. "Take him down."

"You've no authority!" I roared. "I'm not answerable to you, you Russian swine! Let me go!" They were dragging me forward by main strength, while I bawled to the chamberlain, pleading with him to tell the Rani. They ran me through a doorway and down a flight of stone steps, with Ignatieff following, the chamberlain twittering in front of him. I struggled in panic, for it was plain that the brute was going to prevent the Rani from hearing of my arrival until after he'd done. . . . I nearly threw up in terror, for the troopers were hauling me across the floor to an enormous wheel like a cable drum, set perpendicular above ground level. There were manacles dangling from it and fetters attached to the stone floor beneath it--Jesus! They had racked an English officer to death in this very fort, Ilderim had said, and now they flung me against the hellish contraption, one grinning trooper pinning me bodily while the other clamped my hands in the manacles above my head and then snapped the floor chains round my ankles. I yelled and swore, the chamberlain sank down fearfully onto the bottom step and Ignatieff lit another cigarette.

"So much would not be necessary if I only sought information," says he, in that dreadful metallic whisper. "With such a coward as you, the threat is sufficient. But you are going to tell me why you are here, what treachery you intended and for what purpose you wished to see Her Highness. And when I am satisfied that you have told me everything"--he stepped close up to me, that awful eye staring into mine, and concluded in Russian, for my benefit alone--"the racking will continue until you are dead." He signed to the troopers and stepped back.

"For Christ's sake, Ignatieff!" I screamed. "You can't do this! I'm a British officer, a white man--let me go, you bastard! Please--in God's name, I'll tell you!" I felt the drum turn behind me as the troopers put their weight on the lever, drawing my arms taut above my head. "No, no! Let me go, you foul swine! I'm a gentleman, damn you--for pity's sake! We've had tea with the Queen! No, please----"

There was a clank from the huge wheel and the chains wrenched at my wrists and ankles, sending shoots of pain through my arm and thigh muscles. I howled at the top of my voice as the wheel turned, stretching me to what seemed the limit of endurance, and Ignatieff stepped closer again.

"Why did you come?" says he.

"Let me go! You vile bloody dog, you!" Behind him I saw that the chamberlain was on his feet, white with horror. "Run!" I yelled. "Run, you stupid fat sod! Get your mistress--quickly!" But he seemed rooted to the spot, and then the drum clanked again and an excruciating agony flamed through my biceps and shoulders, as though they were being hauled out of my body (which, of course, they were). I tried to scream again, but nothing came out, and then his devil's face was next to mine again and I was babbling:

"Don't--don't, for Jesus' sake! I'll tell you--I'll tell you!" And even through the red mist of pain, I knew that once I did, I was a dead man. But I couldn't bear it--I had to talk--and then inspiration came through the agony and I let my head loll sideways, with a groan that died away. If only I could buy a moment's time--if only the chamberlain would run for help--if only Ignatieff would believe I'd fainted and I could keep up the pretence with my whole body shrieking in pain. His palm slapped across my face and I couldn't restrain a cry. His hand went up to the troopers and I gasped:

"No--I'll tell you! Don't let them turn it again! I swear it's the truth--only don't let them do it again--oh, God, please, not again!"

"Well?" says he, and I knew I couldn't, delay any longer. I couldn't bear another turn.

"General Rose"--my voice seemed to be a whisper from miles away--"I'm on his staff. . . . He sent me ... to see the Rani. . . . Please, it's the God's truth! Oh, make them let me down!"

"Go on," says that dreadful voice. "What was your message?"

"I was to ask her....." I was staring into his horrible eye, seeing it through a blur of tears, and then somewhere in the obscured distance behind him there was a movement, at the top of the steps, and as I blinked my vision was suddenly clear, and my voice broke into a shuddering sigh of relief, and I let my head fall back. For the door at the top of the steps was open, with my red-coated guard sergeant, that wonderful, bearded genius of a Pathan who spat on shadows, holding it back, and a white figure was stepping through, stopping abruptly, staring down at us. I had always thought she was beautiful, but at that moment Lakshmibai looked like an angel pavilioned in splendour.

I was in such anguish that it was even an effort to keep my eyes open; so I didn't. but I heard her cry of astonishment, and then the chamberlain babbling and Ignatieff swinging round. And then, believe it or not, what she said, in a voice shrill with anger, was:

"Stop that at once! Stop it, do you hear?" for all the world like a young schoolmistress coming into class and catching little Johnny piddling in the inkwell. I'll swear she stamped as she said it, and even at the time, half-fainting with pain that I was, I thought it sounded ridiculous; and then suddenly, with an agonising jerk that made me cry out, the fearful traction on my limbs was relaxed and I was sagging against the wheel, trying to stop my tortured legs from buckling under me. But I'm proud to say I still had my wits about me.

"You won't get anything out of me!" I groaned. "You Russian hound--I'll die first!" I fluttered an eye open to see how this was received, but she was too busy choking back her fury as she confronted Ignatieff.

"This is by your order?" Lord, it was a lovely voice. "Do you know who this is?"

I'll say this for him, he faced her without so much as a blink--indeed, he even tossed his blasted cigarette aside in deference before giving his little bow to her.

"It is a spy. Highness, who stole into your city in disguise--as you can see."

"It is a British officer!" She was blazing, trembling from her white head veil all down her shapely sari-wrapped body to her little pearled sandals. "An envoy of the Sirkar, who brings a message for me. For me!" And she stamped again. "Where is it?"

Ignatieff pulled the note from his girdle and handed it to her without a word. She read it and then folded it deliberately and looked him in the face.

"Sher Khan tells me he had orders to deliver it into my hands alone." She was holding in her auger still, with an effort. "But seeing him with it, you asked what it might be and the fool gave it you. And having read it, you dared to question this man without my leave----"

"It was a suspicious message, Highness," says Ignatieff, dead level. "And this man was obviously a spy----"

"You bloody liar!" croaks I. "You knew damned well what I was! Don't listen to him, Lakshmi--Highness--the swine's got it in for me! He was trying to murder me, out of spite!"

She gave me one look and then fronted Ignatieff again. "Spy or not, it is I who rule here. Sometimes I think you forget it, Count Ignatieff." She faced him eye to eye for a long moment and then turned away from him. She looked at me and then away, and we all waited, in dead silence. Finally, she said quietly, "I shall see to this man and decide what is to be done with him." She turned to Ignatieff. "You may go, Count."

He bowed and said, "I regret if I have offended Your Highness. If I have done so, it was out of zeal for the cause we both serve--Your Highness' government"--he paused--"and my imperial master's. I would be failing in my duty to both if I did not remind you that this man is a most dangerous and notorious British agent, and that----"

"I know very well who and what he is," says she quietly; and at that, the gotch-eyed son of a bitch said no more but bowed again and took himself off, with the two troopers sidling hastily after him, salaaming nervously as they passed her. They clattered up the steps behind Ignatieff, and Sher Khan closed the door after them, which left the four of us, all cosy as ninepence--Lakshmibai standing like a glimmering white statue, the little chamberlain twitching in anxious silence, Sher Khan on the door and H. Flashman, Esq., doing his celebrated imitation of a Protestant martyr.

Damned uncomfortable, too, but something told me grateful babblement wouldn't be in order; so I said as steadily as I could, "Thank you, Your Highness. Forgive me if I don't make my bow, but in the circumstances...."

Very gallant, you see, but the truth was that fiery pains were still shooting through my arms and legs, and it was all I could do to keep from gasping and groaning. She was standing looking at me, quite expressionless, so I added hopefully, "If your havildar would release me. . . ."

But she didn't move a muscle, and I felt a sudden thrill of unease under the steady gaze of those dark eyes, the whites so clear against her dusky skin. What the hell was she up to, keeping me strung up on this bloody machine, and not so much as a glimmer of a smile, or recognition, even? I palpitated while she stood watching me and thinking, and then she came up within a yard of me and spoke, in a flat, hard voice. "What did he want to know from you?"

The tone took my breath away, but I held my head up. "He wanted to know my business with Your Highness."

Her glance went to the chains on my wrists, then back to my face. "And did you tell him?"

"Of course not." I thought a brave smile mightn't be out of place; so I tried one. "I like people to ask me questions-- politely."

She turned her head towards the little chamberlain. "Is this true?"

He puffed and flapped his arms, all eagerness. "Indeed, Exalted Highness! Not a word did the colonel sahib say-- not even under the cruel torture! He did not even cry out--much. . . . Oh, he is an officer sahib, of course, and----"

Poor little bastard was hoping to butter his bread on the right side, of course, but I wasn't sure he was backing a winner here; she was still looking at me as if I were some carcase on a butcher's slab. The chilling thought struck me that it probably wasn't the first time she'd contemplated some poor devil in my situation, and then she turned her head and called to Sher Khan and he came tumbling down the steps double-quick, while the sweat broke out on me. Surely she wasn't going to order him to----

"Release him," says she, and I near fainted with relief. She watched impassively while he unclamped me, and I took a few staggering and damned painful steps, catching at that hellish wheel for support. Then:

"Bring him," says she curtly. "I shall question him myself," and without another word, she turned and walked up the steps, out of the dungeon, with the little chamberlain bobbing nervously behind her, and Sher Khan spitting and grunting as he assisted me to follow.

"Speak well of me to Her Highness, husoor," he muttered as he gave me a shoulder. "If I blundered in giving thy kitab to the Ruski sahib, did I not make amends? I went for her when I saw he meant to ill-use thee..... I had not recognised the, God knows----"

I reassured him--he could have had a knighthood and the town-hall clock for my part--as he conducted me up through the guardroom to a little spiral stair and then along a great stone passage of the fort, which gave way to a carpeted corridor where sentries of her guard stood in their steel caps and backs-and-breasts. I limped along, relieved to find that apart from a few painfully pulled muscles and badly skinned wrists and ankles, I wasn't much the worse--yet. And then Sher Khan was ushering me through a door and I found myself in a smaller version of the durbar room at the palace--a long, low, richly furnished apartment, all in white, with a quilted carpet, and silk hangings on the walls, divans and cushions and glowing Persian pictures and even a great silver cage in which tiny birds cheeped and fluttered. The air was heavy with perfume, but I still hadn't got the stink of fear out of my nostrils, and the sight of Lakshmibai waiting did nothing to cheer me up.

She was sitting on a low backless couch, listening to the little chamberlain, who was whispering 15 to the dozen, but at sight of me she stopped him. There were two of her ladies with her and the whole group just looked at me, the women curiously and Lakshmibai with the same damned disinheriting stare she'd used in the dungeon.

"Set him there," says she to Sher Khan, pointing to the middle of the floor, "and tie his hands behind him." He jumped to it, wrenching the knots with no thought for my flayed wrists. "He will be safe enough so," she added to the little chamberlain. "Go, all of you--and Sher Khan will remain beyond that door within call."

Dear God, what now? I wondered as the chamberlain and the ladies rustled out, eyeing me apprehensively. I heard Sher Khan close the door behind him. And then, to my amazement, she sprang from her seat and was flying across the room towards me.

"Oh, my darling one! You have come back--I thought I should never see you again!" And her arms were about my neck; that lovely dark face, all wet with tears, was upturned to mine and she was kissing me at random, on the cheeks and chin and eyes and mouth, sobbing out endearments and shuddering against me.

I'm an easygoing chap who can take things pretty much as they come, but now I wondered whether I was mad or dreaming. Here she was, weeping and slobbering over me as if I were Little Willie, the Collier's Dying Child. It was all a shade too much for my bemused brain and I sank to my knees and she sank with me.

"Have they hurt you, my sweet? Ah, your poor flesh!" In a moment, she was soothing my scraped ankles with one hand and, with the other behind my head, kissing me lingeringly on the mouth. My amazement gave way to the most ecstatic relief and pleasure as her open mouth trembled on mine and her breasts pushed hard against me--and, damn it, my hands were still tied.

"Oh, lucky Lakshmi!" I was babbling in sheer delight.

"I thought you were dead and I have mourned you since that dreadful day when they found the dead Thugs near the pavilion--but you are safe, my darling!" The great eyes were brimming with tears again. "I love you so."

Well, I'd heard it expressed, with varying degrees of passion, by countless females. It's always gratifying, but never had it been so welcome as now. So I used my weight to bear her down on the cushions--damned difficult with my hands bound--and she lay there, teasing me with her tongue and stroking my face gently with her finger tips until I thought I'd burst.

"Lakshmi, chabeli, untie my hands," I croaked and she disengaged herself, glanced at the door and smiled longingly."

"I cannot now. You see, to them you are a spy, a prisoner."

"But I have come secretly in order to bring you a message from Sir Hugh Rose. Lakshmi, dearest, it's an offer of life for you! Untie my hands and let me tell you!"

"Wait!" said she. "Come and sit on this divan. It is best that you remain bound in case someone should come suddenly--it will not be for long. I promise. See, I shall give you a drink for your parched throat."

She looked again at my torn ankles and a blaze of hatred passed across her face. "That beast of Russia." says she, clenching her tiny fist. "I will have him drawn apart and I will make him eat that hideous eye of his! The Tsar, his master, may look for him in hell!"

Excellent sentiments, I reflected and while she filled a goblet with sherbet, I thought I'd improve the shining hour. "It was Ignatieff who set the Thugs on me that night. He's been dogging me since I came to India--and stirring up rebellion----" I suddenly stopped there, remembering that she was a leader of that rebellion and, obviously, Ignatieff was her ally. She put the cup to my lips and I drank greedily--being racked is a great way to raise a thirst, you know.

She stood up. "If only I had listened to you. If only there had been more time to find a way--to right the injustice against me, against Jhansi, against my son--"

"How is the young fella, by the way? Thriving? Fine lad, that."

"But waiting turned me to despair and hatred . . . and yet"--her great almond eyes had such a look in them that even my old experienced heart skipped a beat--"you were gentle and kind and you seemed to understand. Then, that day we fenced in the durbar room, I felt something inside me I'd never known before. And later----"

"In the pavilion," says I hoarsely. "Oh, Lakshmi, the most wonderful moment of my life. Really capital, don't ye know. Darling, untie my hands."

There was a strange, distant look in her eyes. "And then you disappeared and I thought you dead." She was trying not to cry. "After that came the news of the red wind sweeping through the British garrisons in the north. And even here in Jhansi, they killed them all and I was helpless." She was biting her lip now and staring pleadingly at me. If she'd been before the House of Lords, the old goats would have been roaring, "Not guilty, on my honour!"

"What could I do?" she went on. "The raj was falling and my own cousin Nana was raising the standard of revolt. To stand idle was to lose Jhansi. Oh, but you British will not understand!"

We understood well enough that the only real treason was to pick the wrong side--which is what she'd done. "Dearest," says I, "it can all come right again, that's why I'm here. I've come from Sir Hugh and what he says comes straight from Lord Canning in Calcutta. They want to save you, my dear, if you'll let them."

"They want me to surrender," says she, standing up and walking away to set the cup on a table. The sight of that tight-wrapped sari stirring over those splendid hips set my fingers working feverishly at the knots behind my back. She turned, with her bosom going up like balloons and her face set and sad. "They want me to give up my Jhansi."

"It's lost anyway. You must know it. Even Ignatieff--what the devil's he doing here, anyway?"

"He has been at Meerut and Delhi and here--everywhere--since the beginning. He makes rebellion, as you say, and talks of a Russian army over the Khyber. Some would welcome that--myself, I fear it. If Jhansi falls, I suppose he will join Tantia or Nana"--she shrugged--"unless I have him killed for what he has done to you."

All in good time, thinks I happily, and got back to the matter at hand. "It's you they want. You see, there'll be no pardon for the pandies in your garrison when we storm the city. But if you will give yourself up alone, then they won't"--and I couldn't meet her eyes at this--"punish you."

"Why should they spare me?" And the fire was back in her voice. "They blow men away from guns or hang them without trial and burn whole cities. Will they spare Nana or Tantia or Azimullah? Then why the Rani of Jhansi?

It wasn't an easy one to answer truthfully. She wouldn't take it too kindly if I said it was for the sake of politics, to keep the public happy. "Whatever their reasons, all that matters----"

"Is it because the British do not make war on women?" she asked softly and came over to stand in front of me. "Is it because they wish to take a beautiful captive, as the Romans did, and show her as a spectacle to the people in London?"

"That ain't our style," says I pretty sharp.

"Then what do Sir Hugh and Lord Canning care of me?" She dropped to her knees again, her lower lip trembling. "Unless--you came from Lord Palmer-ston--have you told them to save me?"

By George, here was an unexpected ball at my foot. It hadn't crossed my mind that she'd think I was behind Rose's remarkable offer, but when chance arises, I know how to grasp it as well as the next man. So, looking at her steady and grim, I made myself go red in the face and then looked down at the carpet, all dumb, noble, unspoken emotion.

She put out her hand and lifted my chin. "Have you risked so much for me?"

"You know how I feel," says I, trying to look romantically stuffed. "I've loved you since the moment I clapped eyes on you in that swing. More than anything else in the world."

At the moment, it wasn't all gammon, mind you. I didn't love her as much as Elspeth, I dare say, but if you put 'em together side by side, both stripped down, I'd have to think hard before putting England in to bat.

"Tonight, I did not think whether you loved me or no. All that mattered was that you were with me again. But now"--she was looking at me with a kind of sorrowful perplexity--"I find that you have done all this for love of me." After a moment, she kissed me and asked simply, "What do they wish me to do?"

"To surrender yourself, no more. If I tell you how, will you do it?"

"If you will stay with me afterwards"--her eyes were fixed on mine, soft and steady--"I will do whatever they ask."

"When the city is stormed," says I, "you must be ready to make an escape through the Orcha gate. We'll have drawn off our cavalry picket there and it will be clear. You will ride out on the Orcha road and then you will be captured. It will look--well, it will look all right."

She nodded gravely. "And the city?"

"There'll be no looting"--Rose had promised that, for what it was worth--"and the people will be all right if they lie low and don't resist."

"And then--will they imprison me?"

I wasn't sure about this and had to go careful. She'd be exiled at least, but there was no point in telling her that. "No," says I, "they'll treat you very well. And then it'll all blow over, don't you know? Why, I can think of a score of nig--that is, native--chieftains and kings who've been daggers drawn with us, but after the war, we've been the best of friends. No hard feelings. We ain't vindictive, even the Liberals."

I smiled to reassure her and after a while, she smiled back, gave a great sigh and settled against me. What with all this nestling, I was growing monstrous horny again and I said it would be a capital idea to unslip my hands just for a moment.

But she shook her head and said that we must do nothing more to excite suspicion. I must seem to be a prisoner, but she would send for me when the time was ripe. "And we shall go together with a trusted few. And you will protect me--and love me when we come to the Sirkar?"

Till you're blue in the face, you darling houri, thinks I, and kissed her hands. Then she straightened her veil and fussed anxiously with her mirror before seating herself on her divan, and it was the charmingest thing to see her give me a last radiant smile and then compose her face in that icy mask, while I waited suitably hangdog, standing in the middle of the floor at a respectful distance. She struck her little gong, which brought Sher Khan in like the village fire brigade, with chamberlain and ladies behind him.

"Confine this prisoner in the north tower," says she, as if I were so much dross. "He is not to be harshly used but keep him close--your head on it, Sher Khan."

I was bustled away forthwith--but it's my guess that Sher Khan, with that leery Pathan nose of his, guessed that all was not quite what it seemed, for he was a most solicitous jailer in the days that followed. He kept me well provisioned, bringing all my food and drink himself, seeing to it that I was as comfortable as my little cell permitted.

It took me a few hours to settle down after what I had been through, but when I came to cast up the score, it looked well enough. Bar my aching joints and skinned limbs, I was well enough and damned thankful for it. As to the future--well, I'd thought Rose's plan was just moonshine, but then I'd never dreamed that Lakshmibai was infatuated with me. Attracted, well enough--it's an odd woman that ain't--but the force of her passion had been bewildering. And yet, why not? I'd known it to happen before, after all, and often as not with the same kind of woman--the highborn, pampered kind who go through their young lives surrounded by men who are forever deferring and toadying, so that when a real plunger like myself comes along and treats 'em easy, like women and not as queens, they're taken all aback. It's something new to them to have a big likely chap who ain't abashed by their grandeur but looks 'em over with a warm eye, perfectly respectful but daring them just the same. They resent it and like it, too, and if you can just tempt them into bed and show them what they've been missing--why, the next thing you know they're head over heels in love with you.

In the meantime, I could only wait, with some excitement, for Rose to mount his assault. When a tremendous cannonading in the city broke out on the following day, with native pipes and drums squealing and thundering, I thought the attack had begun, but it was a false alarm, as Sher Khan informed me later. It seemed that Tantia Topi had suddenly hove in sight with a rebel army 20,000 strong to try to relieve Jhansi; Rose, cool as a trout as usual, had left his heavy artillery and cavalry to continue the siege and had turned with the rest of his force and thrashed Tantia handsomely on the Betwa River, a few miles away. At the same time, he'd ordered a diversionary attack on Jhansi to keep the defenders from sallying out to help Tantia; that had been the noise I'd heard.2

"So much for our stouthearted mutineers in Jhansi," sneers Sher Khan. "If they had sallied out, your army might have been caught like a nut between two stones, but they contented themselves with howling and burning powder." He spat. "Let the Sirkar eat them, and welcome."

I reminded him that he would get short shrift when Jhansi fell.

"I am no mutineer," says he. "I have eaten the Rani's salt and I fight for her even as I fought for the Sirkar in the Guides. The sahibs know the difference between a rebel and a soldier who keeps faith. They will treat me with honour." He was another like Ilderim--shorter and uglier, though, with a smashed nose and pocked face, but a slap-up Pathan Khyber every inch.

"With any luck, they will have hanged thy Ruski friend by now," he went on, grinning. "He rode out to join Tantia in the night and has not returned. Is that good news, Iflass-man husoor?"

Wasn't it just, though? Ignatieff would be off to assist the rebels in the field. I felt all the better for knowing he was out of distance, but I doubted that he'd allow himself to be killed or taken--he was too downy a bird for that.

With Tantia whipped, Rose, it seemed, would lose no more time before assaulting the city, but another day and night of waiting passed and still there was nothing but the distant thump of cannon fire to disturb my cell. It wasn't till the third night that the deuce of a bombardment broke out, in the small hours, and lasted until almost dawn, and then I heard what I'd been waiting for--the crash of volley fire, signifying British infantry, and the sound of explosions within the town itself, and even distant bugle calls.

"They are in the city," says Sher Khan, when he brought my breakfast. "The mutineers are fighting better than I thought and it is hot work in the streets, they say." He grinned cheerfully and tapped the hilt of his Khyber knife. "Will Her Highness order me to cut thy throat when the last attack goes home, think ye? Eat well, husoor," and the brute swaggered out, chuckling.

Plainly, she hadn't confided her intentions to him. I guessed she'd wait for nightfall and then make her run; by that time, our fellows would be thumping at the gates of the fort itself. So I contained myself, listened to the crackle of firing and explosion, drawing always nearer, until by nightfall, it seemed to be only a few hundred yards off--I was chewing my nails by then, I may tell you. But the dark came and still the sound of battle went on, and I could even hear what I thought were English voices shouting in the distance, among the yells and shrieks. Through the one high window of my cell, the night sky was glaring red--Jhansi was dying hard, by the look of it.

I don't know what time it was when I heard the sudden rattle of the bolt in my cell door and Sher Khan and two of his guardsmen came in, carrying torches. They didn't stand on ceremony but hustled me out and down narrow stone stairs and passages to a little courtyard. The moon wasn't up yet, but it was light enough, with the red glare above the walls, and the air was heavy with powder smoke and the drift of burning; the crashing of musketry was close outside the fort now.

The yard seemed to be full of redcoated troopers of the Rani's guard and over by a narrow gateway, I saw a slim figure mounted on a grey horse, which I recognised at once as Lakshmibai. There were mounted guardsmen with her, and a couple of her ladies, also mounted, and heavily veiled; one of the mounted men had a child perched on his saddlebow: Damodar, her stepson. I was about to call out, but to my astonishment, Sher Khan suddenly stooped beside me, there was a metallic snap and he had a fetter clasped round my left ankle. Before I could even protest, he was thrusting me towards a horse, snarling, "Up, husoor!" and I was no sooner in the saddle than he had passed a short chain from my fetter under the beast's belly and secured my other ankle, so that I was effectively shackled to the pony.

"What the hell's this?" I cried, and he chuckled as he swung aboard a horse beside me.

"Heavy spurs, husoor!" says he. "Peace!--it is by her order and doubtless for your own safety. Follow!" And he shook my bridle, urging me across the square; the little party by the gate were already passing out of sight, and a moment later, we were riding single file down a steep alleyway, with towering walls on either side, Sher Khan just ahead of me and another Pathan immediately behind.

I couldn't think what to make of this, until it dawned on me that she wouldn't have let her entourage into the whole secret--they would know she was escaping but not that she intended to give herself up to the British. So for form's sake, I must appear to be a prisoner still. I wished she'd given me the chance of a secret word beforehand, though, and let me ride with her; I didn't want us blundering into the besieging cavalry in the dark and perhaps being mistaken.

However, there was nothing for it now but to carry on. Our little cavalcade clattered down the alleyways, twisting and turning, and then into a broader street, where a house was burning, but there wasn't a soul to be seen and the sound of firing was receding behind us. Once we'd passed the fire, it was damned dark among the rickety buildings, until there were torches and a high gateway, and more of her guardsmen in the entry-way; I saw her grey horse stop as she leaned from the saddle to consult with the guard commander, and waited with my heart in my mouth until he stepped back, saluting, and barked an order. Two of his men threw open a wicket in the main gate, and a moment later, we were filing through and I knew we were coming out onto the Orcha road.

It was blacker than hell in November under the lee of the great gateway, but a half mile ahead, there was the twinkling line of our picket fires and flashes of gunfire as the artillery pieces joined in the bombardment of the city. Sher Khan had my bridle in his fist as we moved forward at a walk and then at a slow trot; it was easy going on the broad road surface at first, but then the dim figures of the riders ahead seemed to be veering away to the right, and as we followed, my horse stumbled on rough ground--we were leaving the road for the flat maidan and I felt the first prickle of doubt in my mind. Why were we turning aside? The path to safety lay straight along the road, where Rose's pickets would be waiting--she knew that, even if her riders didn't. Didn't she realise we were going astray--that on this tack we would probably blunder into pickets that weren't expecting us? The time for pretence was past, anyhow--it was high time I was up with her, taking a hand, or God knew where we would land. But even as I stiffened in my saddle to shove my heels in and forge ahead, Sher Khan's hand leaped from my bridle to my wrist, there was a zeep of steel and the Khyber knife was pricking my ribs, with his voice hissing out of the dark:

"One word, Bloody Lance--one word, and you'll say the next one to Shaitan!"

The shock of it knocked my wits endways--but only for a moment. There's nothing like 18 inches of razor-edged steel for turning a growing doubt into a stone-ginger certainty and before we'd gone another five paces, I had sprung to the most terrifying conclusion: She was escaping, right enough, but not the way Rose and I had planned it--she was using the information I'd given her but in her own way! It rushed in on me in a mad whirl of thoughts--all her protestations, her slobbering over me, those tear-filled eyes, the lips on mine, the passionate endearments--all false? They couldn't be, in God's name! Why, she'd been all over me, like a crazy schoolgirl, but now we were pacing still faster in the wrong direction, the knife was scoring my side, and suddenly there was a shouted challenge ahead and a cry, the riders were spurring forward, a musket cracked and Sher Khan roared in my ear:

"Ride, feringhee--and ride straight or I'll split your backbone!"

He slashed his reins at my pony, it bounded forward and in a second, I was flying along in the dark, willy-nilly, with him at my elbow and the thundering shadows surging ahead. There was a fusillade of shots, off to the left, and a ball whined overhead; as I loosed the reins, trusting to my pony's feet, I saw the picket fires only a few hundred yards off. We were racing towards a gap between one fire and the next, perhaps two furlongs across; all I could do was career ahead, with Sher Khan and a Pathan either side of me--I couldn't roll from the saddle, even if I'd dared, with that infernal chain beneath my horse's belly; I daren't swerve or his knife would be in my back; I could only gallop, cursing in sick bewilderment, praying to God I wouldn't stop a blade or a bullet. Where the hell were we going--was it some ghastly error after all? No, it was treachery and I knew it--and now the picket fires were on our flanks, there were more shots, a horse screamed ahead of us and my pony swerved past the dim struggling mass on the ground, with Sher Khan still knee to knee with me as we sped on. A bugle was sounding behind, and faint voices yelling; ahead was the drumming of hooves and the dim shapes of the Rani's riders, scattered now as they galloped for their lives. We were clear through and every stride was taking us farther from Jhansi and Rose's army, and safety.

How long we kept up that breakneck pace I don't know, or what direction we took--I'd been through too much, my mind was just a welter of fear and bewilderment and rage and stark disbelief. I didn't know what to think--she couldn't have sold me so cruelly, surely, not after what she'd said and the way she'd held my face and looked at me? But I knew she had--my disbelief was just sheer hurt vanity. God, did I think I was the only sincere liar in the world? And here I was, humbugged to hell and beyond, being kidnapped in the train of this deceitful rebel bitch--or was I wrong, was there some explanation after all? That's what I still wanted to believe, of course--there's nothing like infatuation for stoking false hope.

However, there's no point in recounting all the idiot arguments I had with myself on that wild ride through the night, with the miles flying by unseen until the gloom began to lighten, the scrub-dotted plain came into misty view, and Sher Khan still clung like a bearded ghost at my elbow, his teeth bared as he crouched over his pony's mane. The riders ahead were still driving their tired beasts on at full stretch; about a hundred yards in front, I could see Lakshmibai's slim figure on her grey mare, with the Pathans flanking her. It was like a drunken nightmare--on and on, exhausting, over that endless plain.

There was a yell from the flank, and one of the Pathans up in his stirrups, pointing. A shot cracked, I saw a sudden flash of scarlet to our left and there was a little cloud of horsemen bursting out of a nullah--only half our number but Company cavalry, by God! They were careering in to take our leaders in the flank, pukka light-cavalry style, and I tried to yell, but Sher Khan had my bridle again, wrenching me away to the right, while the Pathan guardsmen drew their sabres and wheeled to face the attackers head on. I watched them meet with a chorus of yells and a clash of steel; the dust swirled up round them as Sher Khan and his mate herded me away, but half-slewed round in my saddle, I saw the sabres swinging and the beasts swerving and plunging as the Company men tried to ride through. A Pathan broke from the press, shepherding away a second rider, and I saw it was one of the Rani's ladies--and then more figures were wheeling out of the dust and one of them was Lakshmibai, with a mounted man bearing down on her, her sabre swung aloft. I heard Sher Khan's anguished yell as her grey mare seemed to stumble, but she reined it up somehow, whirling in her tracks: there was the glitter of steel in her hand, and as the Company man swept down on her, she lunged over her beast's head--the sabres clashed and rang and he was past her, wheeling away, clutching at his arm as he half-slipped from his saddle.3

That was all I saw before Sher Khan and the other herded me down a little nullah, where we halted and waited while the noise of the skirmish gradually died away. I knew what was happening as well as if I were seeing it--the Company riders, outsabred, would be drawing off and, sure enough, presently the Pathans came down the nullah in good order, clustered round Damodar and the Rani's women; among the last to come was Lakshmibai.

It was the first clear look at her that I'd had in all that fearful escape. She was wearing a mail jacket under her long cloak, with a mail cap over her turban, and her sabre was still in her hand, blood on its blade. She stopped a moment by the rider who carried Damodar and spoke to the child; then she laughed and said something to one of the Pathans and handed him her sabre, while she wiped her face with a handkerchief. Then she looked towards me, and the others looked with her, in silence.

As you know, I'm a fairly useful hand on social occasions, ready with the polite phrase or gesture, but I'll confess that in that moment, I couldn't think of anything appropriate to say. When you've just been betrayed by an Indian queen who has previously professed undying love for you and she confronts you, having just sabred one of your countrymen, possibly to death, and you are in the grip of her minions, with your feet chained under your horse--well, the etiquette probably takes some thinking about. I suppose I'd have come out with something in a minute or two--an oath or a squeal for mercy or a polite enquiry, perhaps, but before I had the chance, she was addressing Sher Khan.

"You will take him to Gwalior." Her voice was quiet and perfectly composed. "Hold him there until I send for you. At the last, he will be my bargain."

•

You may say it served me right, and I can't disagree. If I weren't such a susceptible, trusting chap where pretty women are concerned, I dare say I'd have smelled a rat on the night when Lakshmibai rescued me from Ignatieff's rack and then flung herself all over me in her perfumed lair. A less warmblooded fellow might have thought the lady was protesting rather too much and been on his guard when she slobbered fondly over him, vowing undying love and accepting his proposal for her escape. He might--or again, he mightn't.

For myself, I can only say I had no earthly reason to suppose her false. After all, our last previous meeting had been that monumental roll in her pavilion, which had left me with the impression that she wasn't entirely indifferent to me. Secondly, her acceptance of Rose's proposal seemed natural and sensible. Thirdly, I'll admit to being enthralled by her; and fourthly, having just finished a spell on the rack, I was perhaps thinking less clearly than usual. Finally, m'lud, if you'd been confronted by Lakshmibai, with that beautiful dusky face looking pleadingly up at you, and those tits quivering under your nose, I submit that you might have been taken in yourself, and glad of it.

In any event, it didn't make a hap'orth of difference. Even if I'd suspected her then, I was in her power and she could have wrung all the details of Rose's scheme out of me and made her escape anyway. I'd have been dragged along at her tail and finished up in the Gwalior dungeons just the same. And mind you, I'm still not certain how far she was humbugging me; all I know is that if she was play-acting, she seemed to be enjoying her work.

More than I enjoyed Gwalior, at any rate. That's a fearful place, a huge, rocky fortress of a city, bigger than Jhansi, and said to be the most powerful hold in India. I can speak with authority only about its dungeons, which were a shade worse than a Mexican jail, if you can imagine that. I spent the better part of two months in them, cooped in a bottle-shaped cell with my own filth and only rats, fleas and cockroaches for company, except when Sher Khan came to have a look at me, about once a week, to make sure I hadn't up and died on him.

He and his fellow Pathan took me there on Lakshmibai's orders, and it was one of the most punishing rides I've ever endured. I was almost unconscious in the saddle by the time we reached it, for the brutes never took my chain off once in the hundred miles we covered; I think, too, that my spirit had endured more than I could stand, for after all I'd gone through, there were moments now when I no longer cared whether I lived or died--and I have to be pretty far down before that happens. When they brought me to Gwalior by night and half-carried me into the fortress and dropped me into that stinking, ill-lit cell, I just lay and sobbed like an infant, babbling aloud about Meerut and Cawnpore and Lucknow and Thugs and crocodiles and evil bitches--and now this. Would you believe it, the worst was yet to come?

I don't care to dwell on it; so I'll hurry along. While I was in that dungeon at Gwalior, waiting for I didn't know what, and half-believing that I'd rot there forever or go mad first, the final innings of the mutiny were being played out. Campbell was settling things north of the Jumna, and Rose, having captured Jhansi, was pushing north after Tantia Topi and my ministering angel, Lakshmibai, who'd taken the field with him. He beat them at Kalpi and Kunch, driving them towards Gwalior, where I was enjoying the local hospitality. The odd thing was that at the time I was incarcerated there, Gwalior's ruler, Maharaja Sindhia, had remained neutral in the rebellion and had no business to be allowing his prison to be used for the accommodation of captured British officers. In fact, of course, his chief advisors were sympathetic to the rebels all along, as was proved in the end. For after their defeat at Kalpi, Tantia and Lakshmibai turned to Gwalior, and the Maharaja's army went over to them, almost without firing a shot. So there they were, the last great rebel force in India, in possession of India's greatest stronghold--and with Rose closing inexorably in on them.

I knew nothing of all this, of course; mouldering in my cell, with my beard sprouting and my hair matting, and my pandy uniform foul and stinking (for I'd never had it off since I put it on in Rose's camp), I might as well have been at the North Pole. Day followed day, and week followed week, without a cheep from the outside world, for Sher Khan hardly said a word to me, though I raved and pleaded with him whenever he poked his face through the trap into my cell. That's the worst of that kind of imprisonment--not knowing, and losing count of the days, and wondering whether you've been there a month or a year and whether there is really a world outside at all, and doubting that you ever did more than dream that you were once a boy playing in the fields at Rugby or a man who'd walked in the Park or ridden by Albert Gate, saluting the ladies, or played billiards or followed hounds or gone up the Mississippi in a side-wheeler or watched the moon rise over Kuching River or--you can wonder whether any of it ever existed or whether these greasy black walls are perhaps the only world that ever was or will be; that's when you start to go mad, unless you can find something to think about that you know is real.

I've heard of chaps who kept them-selves sane in solitary confinement by singing all the hymns they knew or proving the propositions of Euclid or reciting poetry. Each to his taste: I'm no hand at religion or geometry and the only repeatable poem I can remember is an ode of Horace's that Arnold made me learn as a punishment for farting at prayers. So, instead, I compiled a mental list of all the women I'd had in my life, beginning with that sweaty kitchenmaid in Leicestershire when I was 15, and to my astonishment, there were 478 of them, which seemed rather a lot, especially since I wasn't counting return engagements. It's astonishing, really, when you think how much time it must have taken up.

•

One morning, I woke up to the sound of distant gunfire and it went on all that day and the next, but, of course, I couldn't tell what it meant or who was firing and I was too done to care. All through the morning of the third day it continued, and then suddenly my trap was thrown open and I was being dragged out by Sher Khan and another fellow; I hardly knew where I was. When you're hauled out of a dead captivity like that, everything seems frighteningly loud and fast--I know there was a courtyard full of nigger soldiers running about and shouting, and their pipes blaring, and the gunfire crashing louder than ever, but the shock of release was too much for me to make sense of it. I was half-blinded just by the light of the sky, though it was heavy with red and black monsoon clouds, and I remember thinking, it'll be capital growing weather soon.

It wasn't till they thrust me onto a pony that I came to myself--instinct, I suppose, but when I felt the saddle under me, and the beast stirring, and the smell of horse in my nostrils and my feet in stirrups, I was awake again. I knew this was Gwalior fortress, with the massive gate towering in front of me, and a great gun being dragged through it by a squealing elephant, with a troop of red-coined nigger-prince's cavalry wailing to ride out, and a bedlam of men shouting orders; the din was still deafening, but as Sher Khan mounted his pony beside me, I yelled:

"What's happening? Where are we going?"

"She wants you!" cries he, and grinned us he tapped his hilt. "So she shall have you. Come!"

He thrust a way for us through the crowd milling in the gateway, and I followed, still trying to drink in the sights and sounds of this madhouse that I had all but forgotten--men and carts and bullocks and dust and the clatter of arms: a bhisti running with his water-skin, a file of pandy infantry squatting by the roadside with their muskets between their knees, a child scrambling under a bullock's belly, a great-chested fellow in a spiked cap with a green banner on a pole over his shoulder, a spindly-legged old nigger shuffling along regardless of them all, the smell of cooking ghee and, through it all, that muffled crash of cannon in the distance.

As we emerged from the gate, I stared ahead, trying to understand what was happening. Gunfire--that meant that British troops were somewhere near, and the sight that met my eyes confirmed it. Before me, there were miles of open plain, stretching to distant hills, and the plain was alive with men and animals and all the tackle of war. Perhaps a mile ahead, in the haze, there were tents and the unmistakable ranks of infantry and gun emplacements and squadrons of horses on the move--a whole army stretched across a front of perhaps two miles. I steadied myself as Sher Khan urged me forward, trying to take it in--it was a rebel army, no error, for there were pandy formations moving back towards us, and native state infantry and riders in uniforms I didn't know, men in crimson robes with little shields and curved tulwars, and gun teams with artillery pieces fantastically carved in the native fashion.

That was the first fact: the second was that they were retreating and on the edge of rout. For the formations were moving towards us, and the road itself was choked with men and beasts and vehicles heading for Gwalior. A horse-artillery team was careering in, the gunners clinging to the limbers and their officer lashing at the beasts, a platoon of pandies were coming at the double-quick, their ranks ragged, their faces streaked with dust and sweat, and all along the road men were running or hobbling back, singly and in little groups. I'd seen the signs often enough, the gaping mouths, the wide eyes, the bloody bandages, the high-pitched voices, the half-ordered haste slipping into utter confusion, the abandoned muskets at the roadside, the exhausted men sitting or lying or crying out to those who passed by--this was the first rush of a defeat, by gum! and Sher Khan was dragging me into it.

"What the blazes is happening?" I asked him again, but all I got was a snarl as he whipped my pony to a gallop, and we clattered down the roadside, he keeping just to the rear of me, past the mob of men and beasts streaming back to Gwalior. The formations were closer now and not all of them were retreating: We passed artillery teams that were unlimbering and siting their guns, and regiments of infantry waiting in the humid heat, their faces turned towards the distant hills, their ranks stretched out in good order across the plain. Not far in front, artillery was thundering away, with smoke wreathing up in the still air, and bodies of cavalry, pandy and irregular, were waiting--I remember a squadron of lancers, in green coats, with lobster-tail helmets and long ribbons trailing from their lance heads, and a band of native musicians, squealing and droning fit to drown the gunfire. But less than a half mile ahead, where the dust clouds were churning up and the flashes of cannon shone dully through the haze, I knew what was happening--the army's vanguard was slowly breaking, falling back on the main body, with the weaker vessels absolutely flying down the road.

We crossed a deep nullah and Sher Khan wheeled me off along its far lip, towards a grove of palm and thorn, where tents were pitched. A line of guns to my left was crashing away towards the unseen enemy on the hills--enemy, by God, that was my army!--and round the oasis of tents and trees, there was a screen of horsemen. With a shock, I recognised the long red coats of the Jhansi royal guard, but for the rest, they were only the ragged ghosts of the burly Pathans I remembered, their uniforms torn and filthy, their mounts lean and ungroomed. We passed through them, in among the tents, to where a carpet was spread before the biggest pavilion of all: there were guardsmen there and a motley mob of niggers, military and civilian, and then Sher Khan was pulling me from the saddle, thrusting me forward and crying out:

"He is here, Highness--as you, ordered."

She was in the doorway of the tent, alone--or perhaps I just don't remember any others. She was sipping a glass of sherbet as she turned to look at me and, believe it or not, I was suddenly conscious of the dreadful, scarecrow figure I cut, in my rags and unkempt hair. She was in her white jodhpurs, with a mail jacket over her blouse, and a white cloak; her head was covered by a cap of polished steel like a Roman soldier's, with a white scarf wound round it and under her chin. She looked damned elegant, I know, and even when you noticed the shadows on that perfect coffee-coloured face, beneath the great eyes, she was still a vision to take your breath away. She frowned at sight of me and snapped at Sher Khan:

"What have you done to him?"

He mumbled something, but she shook her head impatiently and said it didn't matter. Then she looked at me again, thoughtfully, while I waited, wondering what the devil was coming, dimly aware that the volume of gunfire was increasing. Finally, she said simply:

"Your friends are over yonder," and indicated the hills. "You may go to them if you wish."

That was all, and for the life of me I couldn't think of anything to say, I suppose I was still bemused and in a shocked condition--otherwise, I might have pointed out that there was a battle apparently raging between me and those friends of mine. But it all seemed unreal and the word that I finally managed to croak out was: "Why?"

She frowned again at that and then put her chin up and snapped her cloak with one hand and said quickly:

"Because it is finished and it is the last thing I can do for you--Colonel." I couldn't think when she'd last called me that. "Is that not enough? Your army will be in Gwalior by tomorrow. That is all."

It was at this moment that I heard shouting behind us, but I paid it no heed, not even when some fellow came running and calling to her and she called something to him. I was wrestling with my memory and it will give you some notion of how foundered I was when I tell you that I absolutely burst out:

"But you said I would be your bargain--didn't you?"

She looked puzzled, and then she smiled and said to Sher Khan, "Give the colonel sahib a horse," and was turning away, when I found my tongue.

"But . . . but you! Lakshmibai! I don't understand . . . what are you going to do?" She didn't answer and I heard my own voice hoarse and harsh: "There's still time! I mean--if you ... if you think it's finished--well, damn it, they ain't going to hang you, you know! I mean, Lord Canning has promised ... and ... and Sir Hugh!" Sher Khan was growling at my elbow, but I shook him off. "Look here, if I'm with you, it's sure to be all right. I'll tell 'em----"

God knows what else I said--I think I was out of my wits just then. Well, when the shot's flying, I don't as a rule think of much but my own hide, and here I was absolutely arguing with the woman. Maybe the dungeon had turned my brain a trifle, for I babbled on about surrender and honourable terms while she just stood looking at me, and then she broke in:

"No--you do not understand. You did not understand when you came back to me at Jhansi. But it was for me you came--for my sake. And so I pay my debt at the end."

"Debt?" I shouted. "You're havering, woman! You said you loved me--oh, I know now you were tricking me, too, but ... but don't it count for anything, then?"

Before she could answer, there was a flurry of hooves and some damned interfering scoundrel in an embroidered coat flung himself off his horse and started shouting at her; behind me, there was a crackle of musketry, and shrieks and orders, and a faint bugle note whispering beyond the cannon. She cried an order and a groom hurried forward, pulling her little mare. I was roaring above the noise at her, swearing I loved her and that she could still save herself, and she shot me a quick look as she took the mare's bridle--it was just for an instant, but it's stayed with me 50 years, and you may think me an old fool and fanciful, but I'll swear there were tears in her eyes--and then she was in the saddle, shouting, and the little mare reared and shot away and I was left standing on the carpet.

Sher Khan had disappeared. I was staring and yelling after her as her riders closed round her, for beyond them, the gunners were racing towards us, with pandy riflemen in amongst them, turning and firing and running again. There were horsemen at the guns, and sabres flashing, and above the hellish din, the bugle was blaring clear in the "Charge!" and over the limbers came blue tunics and white helmets and I couldn't believe my eyes, for they were riders of the Light Brigade, Irish hussars, with an officer up in his stirrups, yelling, and the troopers swarming behind him. They came over the battery like a wave and the scarlet-clad Pathan horsemen were breaking before them.

Lakshmibai was in among the Pathans and she had a sabre in her hand. She seemed to be shouting to them, and then she took a cut at a hussar and missed him as he swept by and for a moment, I lost her in the melee. There were sabres and pistols going like be-damned, and suddenly the grey mare was there, rearing up, and she was in the saddle, but I saw her flinch and lose the reins; for a moment, I thought she was gone, but she kept her seat as the mare turned and raced out of the fight--and my heart stopped as I saw that she was clutching her hands to her stomach, and her head was down. A trooper drove his horse straight into the mare and as it staggered, he sabred at Lakshmibai backhanded--I shrieked and shut my eyes, and when I looked again, she was in the dust, and even at that distance, I could see the crimson stain on her jodhpurs.

I ran towards her--and there must have been riders charging past me as I ran, but I don't remember them--and then I stumbled and fell. As I scrambled up, I saw she was writhing in the dust; her scarf and helmet were gone, she was kicking and clawing at her body, and her face was twisted and working in agony, with her hair half across it. It was hideous and I could only crouch there, gazing horrified. Oh, if it were a novel, I could tell you that I ran to her and cradled her head against me and kissed her, while she looked up at me with a serene smile and murmured something before she closed her eyes, as lovely in death as she'd been in life--but that ain't how people die, not even the Rani of Jhansi. She arched up once, still tearing at herself, and then she flopped over, face down, and I knew she was a goner.4

It was only then, I believe, that I began to think straight again. There was one hell of a skirmish in progress barely 20 yards away and I was unarmed and helpless, on all fours in the dirt. Above all other considerations, I'm glad to say, one seemed paramount--to get the hell out before I got hurt. I was on my feet and running before the thought had consciously formed--running in no particular direction but keeping a weather eye open for a quiet spot or a riderless horse. I dived into the nullah, barged into someone, stumbled up and raced along it, past a group of pandies in pillbox hats who were scrambling into position at the nullah's edge to open fire, leaped over a wrecked cart--and then, wondrous sight, there was a horse, with a wounded nigger on his knees holding the bridle. One kick and he was sprawling; I was aboard and away--I put my head down and fairly flew. A fountain of dirt flew up just ahead of me as a cannon shot from somewhere ploughed into the nullah bank, and the last thing I remember is the horse rearing up and something smashing into my left arm with a blinding pain; a great weight seemed to be pressing down on my head and a red smoke was drifting above me, and then I lost consciousness.

•

I told you the worst was still to come, didn't I? Well, you've read my chronicle of the Great Mutiny, and if you've any humanity, you're bound to admit that I'd had my share of sorrow already, and more--even Campbell later said that I'd seen hard service, so there. But Rose himself declared that if an eyewitness hadn't told him the circumstance of my awakening at Gwalior, he wouldn't have believed it--it was the most terrible thing, he said, that he had ever heard of in all his experience of war, or anybody else's. He wondered that I hadn't lost my reason. I agreed then and I still do. This is what happened:

I came back to life, as is often the case, with my last waking moment clear in my mind. I had been on horseback, riding hard, seeing a shot strike home in a sandy nullah--so why, I wondered irritably, was I now standing up, leaning against something hard, with what seemed to be a polished tabletop in front of me? There was a shocking pain in my head and a blinding glare of light hurting my eyes; so I shut them quickly. I tried to move but couldn't because something was holding me; my ears were ringing and there was a jumble of voices close by, but I couldn't make them out. Why the hell didn't they shut up? I wondered, and I tried to tell them to be quiet, but my voice wouldn't work--I wanted to move, to get away from the thing that was pressing against my chest; so I tugged and an unspeakable pain shot through my left arm and into my chest, a stabbing, searing pain so exquisite that I screamed aloud, and again, and again, at which a voice cried in English, apparently right in my ear:

"'Ere's another as can't 'old 'is bleed-in' row! Stick a gag in this bastard an' all, Andy!"

Someone grabbed my hair and pulled my head back and I shrieked again, opening my eyes wide with the pain, to see a blinding-light sky and a red, sweating face within a few inches of mine. Before I could make another sound, a foul wet rag was stuffed brutally into my mouth, choking me, and a cloth was whipped across it and knotted tight behind my head. I couldn't utter a sound, and when I tried to reach up to haul the filthy thing away, I realised why I hadn't been able to move: My arms were lashed to the object that was pressing into my body. Stupefied, blinking against the glare, in agony with my arm and head and the gag that was suffocating me, I tried to focus my eyes; for a few seconds, there was just a whirl of colours and shapes--and then I saw.

I was tied across the muzzle of a cannon, the iron rim biting into my body, with my arms securely lashed on either side of the polished brown barrel. I was staring along the top of that barrel, between the high wheels, to where two British soldiers were standing by the breech, poking at the touchhole, and one was saying to the other:

"No. by cripes, none o' yer Woolwich models. No lanyards, Jim, my boy--we'll 'ave to stick a fuse in an' stand well clear."

"She's liable to blow 'er flamin' wheels off, though, ain't she?" says the other. "There's a four-pahnd cartridge in there, wiv a stone shot. S'pose it'll splinter, eh?"

"Ask 'im--arterwards!" says the first, gesturing at me, and they both laughed uproariously. "You'll tell us, won't yer, Sambo?"

For a moment, I couldn't make it out--what the devil were they talking about? And how dared the insolent dogs address a colonel as "Sambo"--and one of 'em with a pipe stuck between his grinning teeth? Fury surged up in me, as I stared into those red yokel faces, leering at me, and I shouted. "Damn your eyes, you mutinous bastards! How dare you--d'ye know who I am, you swine? I'll flog the ribs out of you. . . ." But it didn't come out as a shout, only as a soundless gasp deep in my throat behind that stifling gag. Then, ever so slowly, it dawned on me where I was and what was happening, and my brain seemed to explode with the unutterable horror of it. As Rose said afterwards. I ought to have gone mad; I believe I did for an instant.

I don't have to elaborate my sensations--anyway, I couldn't. I can only say that I was sane enough after that first spasm of dreadful realisation, because behind the fog. of panic, I saw in a second what had happened--saw it with blinding certainty. I had been knocked on the head, presumably by a splinter of flying debris, and picked up senseless by our gallant troops. Of course, they'd taken me for a pandy--with my matted hair and beard and filthy and ragged sepoy uniform: they'd seen I wasn't dead and had decided to execute me in style, along with other prisoners. For as I flung my head round in an ecstasy of such fear as even I had never known before, I saw that mine was only one in a line of guns, six or seven of them, and across the muzzle of each was strapped a human figure. Some were ragged pandies, like me, others were just niggers: one or two were gagged, as I was, the rest were not; some had been tied face to the gun, but most had the muzzles in their backs. And shortly these brutes who loafed about the guns at their ease, spitting and smoking and chaffing to each other, would touch off the charges and a mass of splintering stone would tear through my vitals--and there was nothing I could do to stop them! If I hadn't screamed when I regained consciousness. I wouldn't have been gagged, and three words would have been enough to show them their ghastly error--but now I couldn't utter a sound, only watch with bulging eyes as one of the troopers, in leisurely fashion, pushed a length of fuse into the touchhole, winked at me and then sauntered back to rejoin his mates, who were standing or squatting in the sunlight, obviously waiting for the word to start the carnage.

"Come on, come on, where the 'ell's the captin?" says one. "Still at mess, I'll lay. Christ, it's 'ot! I want ter get on my charpai, I do, an' bang me bleedin' ear'ole. 'E couldn't blow the bloody pandies away arter supper, could 'e? Oh, no. not 'im."

"Wot we blowin' 'em up for?" says one pale young trooper. "Couldn't they 'ang the pore sod's--or shoot 'em? It 'ud be cheaper."

"Pore sods my arse." says the first. "You know what they done, these black scum? You shoulda bin at Delhi, see the bloody way they ripped up wimmen an' kids--fair sicken yer, wot wi' tripes an' innards all over the plice. Blowin' away's too . . . good for 'em."

"Not as cruel as 'angin', neither," says a third. "They don't feel nothin'." He strolled past my gun and to my horror, he patted me on the head. "So cheer up, Sambo, you'll soon be dead. 'Ere, wot's the matter wiv 'im. Bert, d'ye reckon?"

I was writhing frenziedly in my bonds, almost fainting with the agony of my wounded arm, which was gashed and bleeding, flinging my head from side to side as I tried to spit out that horrible gag, almost bursting internally in my effort to make some sound, any sound, that would make him understand the ghastly mistake they'd made. He stood, grinning stupidly, and Bert sauntered up, knocking his pipe out on the gun.

"Matter? Wot the 'ell d'yer think's the matter, you duffer? 'E don't want 'is guts blew all the way to Calcutta--that's wot's the matter! Gawd, 'e'll kill 'isself wiv appleplexie by the look of 'im."

"Funny, though, ain't it?" says the first. "An' look at the rest of 'em--jes' waitin' there, an' not even a squeak from 'em, as if they didn't care. Pathetic, ain't it?"

"That's their religion," pronounced Bert. "They fink they're goin' to 'eaven--they fink they're goin' to get 'arf-a-dozen rum bints apiece, an' bull 'em till Judgement Day. Fact."

"Go on! They don't look all that bleedin' pleased, then, do they?"

They turned away and I flopped over the gun, near to suffocation and with my heart ready to burst for misery and fear. Only one word--that was all I needed--Christ, if only I could get a hand free, a finger, even! Blood from my wounded arm had run onto the gun, drying almost at once on the burning metal--if I could even scrawl a message in it--or just a letter--they might see it and understand. I must be able to do something--think, think, think, I screamed inside my head, fighting back the madness, straining with all my power to tear my right wrist free, almost dislocating my neck in a futile effort to work the gag binding loose. My mouth was full of its filthy taste, it seemed to be slipping farther into my gullet, choking me--God, if they thought I was choking, would they pull it out, even for a second?--that was all I needed, oh, God, please, please, let them--I couldn't die like this, like a stinking nigger pandy, after all I'd suffered--not by such cruel, ghastly, ill luck.

"Aht pipes, straighten up--orficer comin'!" cries one of the troopers, and they scrambled up hastily, adjusting their kepis, doing up their shirt buttons, as two officers came strolling across from the tents a couple of hundred yards away. I gazed towards them like a man demented, as though by staring, I could attract their attention; my right wrist was raw and bleeding with my dragging at it, but the rope was like a band of steel round it and I couldn't do more than scrabble with my fingers at the hot metal. I was crying, uncontrollably; my head was swimming--but no, no, I mustn't faint! Anything but that--think, think, don't faint, don't go mad! They've never got you yet--you've always slid out somehow.

"All ready, Sergeant?" The leading officer was glancing along the line of guns and my eyes nearly started from my head as I saw it was Clem Hennidge5--Dandy Clem of the Eighth Hussars, whom I'd ridden with at Balaclava. He was within five yards of me, nodding to the sergeant, glancing briefly round, while beside him a fair young lieutenant was storing with popeyes at us trussed victims, going pale and looking ready to puke, By heaven, he wasn't the only one!

He shuddered and I heard him mutter to Hennidge: "Christ! I shan't be writing to mother about this, though!"

"Beastly business," says Hennidge, slapping his crop in his palm. "Orders, though, what? Very good, Sergeant--we'll touch 'em off all together, if you please. All properly shotted and primed? Very good, then."

"Yessir! Beg pardon, sir, usual orders is to touch 'em off one arter the other, sir. Least ways, that's 'ow we done it at Kalpi, sir!"

"Good God!" says Hennidge, and contained himself. "I'll be obliged if you'll fire all together, Sergeant, on this occasion!" He muttered something to the lieutenant, shaking his head as in despair.

Two men ran forward to my gun, one of them pulling matches from his pocket. He glanced nervously back and called:

"Sar't--sir! This 'un ain't got no lock, nor lanyard, please! See, sir, it's one o' them nigger guns--can't fire it 'cept with a fuse, sir!"

"What's that?" cries Hennidge, coming forward. "Oh--I see. Very well, then, light the fuse at the signal, then, and--good God, is this fellow having a fit?"

I had made one last desperate effort to pull free, hauling like a mad thing, flinging myself as far as my lashings would allow, tossing my head, jerking to and fro, my head swimming with the pain of my arm. Hennidge and the boy were staring at me--the boy was green.

"'E's been carryin' on like that since we triced 'im up, sir," says one of the gunners. "Screamin', 'e was--we 'ad ter gag 'im, sir."

Hennidge swallowed and then nodded curtly and turned away, but the lieutenant seemed to be rooted with horrified fascination, as though he couldn't tear his eyes away from me.

"Ready!" bawls the sergeant, and "Light the fuse now, Bert," says the man at my gun. Through a red haze, I saw the match splutter and go out. Bert cursed, struck a second and touched it to the fuse. A moment and it fizzed and the gunners retreated.

"Best stand back, sir!" cries, Bert "Gawd knows what'll happen when she goes orf--might blow wide open!"

The lieutenant shuddered and seemed to collect himself, and then the strangest thing happened. For I absolutely heard a voice and it seemed to be very close in my ear, and the oddest thing was, it was Rudi Starnberg, my old enemy from Jotunberg. and as clear as a bell across the years, I heard him laughing: "The comedy's not finished yet! Come on, play actor!"

No doubt it was the product of a disordered mind, as I stared at death in the spluttering fuse, but just for a second, I realised that if there was the ghost of a chance left, it depended on keeping ice-cold--as Rudi would have done, of course. The lieutenant's eyes were on mine just for an instant before he turned away and in that instant, I raised my brows and lowered them, twice, quickly. It stopped him, and very carefully, as he stared, I closed one eye in an enormous wink. It must have been a grotesque sight; his mouth dropped open, and then I opened my eye, turned my head deliberately and stared fixedly at my right hand. He must look, he must! My wrist was as fast as ever, but I could just turn my hand, palm upwards, fold the thumb and last three fingers slowly into my palm and beckon with my forefinger, once, twice, thrice--and, still beckoning, I stared at him again.

For a moment, he just gaped and closed his eyes and gaped again, and I thought, Oh, Christ, the young idiot's going to stand there until the bloody fuse has burned down! He stared at me, licking his lips, obviously flabbergasted, turned to glance at Hennidge, looked back at me--and then, as I tried to bore into his brain and crooked my finger again and again, he suddenly yelled, "Wait! Sergeant, don't fire!" and, striding forward, he yanked the burning fuse from the touchhole. Clever boys in the Light Brigade in those days.

"What the devil? John--what on earth are you doing?" cries Hennidge. "Sergeant, hold on there!" He came striding up, demanding to know what was up, the lieutenant, pale and sweating, stood by the breech, pointing at me.

"I don't know! That chap--he beckoned, I tell you! And he winked! Look, my God, he's doing it again! He's . . . he's trying to say something!"

"Hey? What?" Hennidge was peering across at me, and I wobbled my eyebrows as ludicrously as I could and tried to munch my lips at the same time. "What the deuce--I believe you're right; you, there, get that gag out of his mouth--sharp, now!"

"Arise, Sir Harry," was one of the sweetest sounds I ever heard. I can think of many others, but so help me, God, none of them rang such peals of hope and joy in my ears as those words of Hennidge's beside the guns at Gwalior. Even as the cloth was wrenched loose, though, and the gag was torn out of my mouth, and I was gasping in air, I was thinking frantically what I must say to prevent the appalling chance of their disbelieving me--something to convince them instantly, beyond doubt, and what I croaked out when my breath came was:

"I'm Flashman--Flashman, d'ye hear! You're Clem Hennidge! 'The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,' God save the Queen. I'm English--English--I'm in disguise! Ask General Rose! I'm Flashman, Harry Flashman! Cut me loose, you bastards! I'm Flashman!"

You never saw such consternation in your life; for a moment, they just made popeyed noises, then Hennidge cries out:

"Flashman? Harry Flashman? But . . . but it's impossible--you can't be!"

Somehow I didn't start to rave or swear or blubber. Instead, I just leered up at him and croaked:

"You give me the lie, Hennidge, and I'll call you out, d'you know? I called a man out in '39, remember? He was a cavalry captain, too. So--would you mind just cutting these damned ropes--and mind my arm, 'cos I think it's broken. . . .

"My God, you are Flashman!" cries he, as if he were looking at a ghost. Then he just stuttered and gaped, and signed to the gunners to cut me loose, which they did lowering me gently to the ground, horror and dismay all over their faces, I was glad to see. But I'll never forget what Hennidge said next, as the lieutenant called for a water bottle and pressed it to my lips; Hennidge stood staring down at me appalled, and then he said, ever so apologetically:

"I say, Flashman--I'm most frightfully sorry!"

Mark you, what else was there to say? Oh, aye, there was something--I hadn't reasoned it, as you can imagine, but it leaped into my mind as I sat there, almost swooning with relief, not minding the pains in my head and arms, and happened to glance along the guns. I was suddenly shuddering horribly, and bowing my head in my sound hand, trying to hold back the sobs, and then I says, as best I could:

"Those niggers tied to the guns. I want them cut loose--all of 'em, directly!"

"What's that?" says he. "But they've been condem----"

"Cut 'em loose, damn you!" My voice was shaking and faint. "Every mother's 'son of a bitch, d'you hear?" I glared up at him, as I sat there in the dust in my rags, with my back to the gun wheel--I must have been a rare sight. "Cut 'em loose, and tell 'em to run away--away, as far as they know how--away from us, and never to get caught again! Blast you, don't stand there gauping--do as I say!"

"You're not well," says he. "You're distraught, and----"

"I'm also a bloody colonel!" I hollered. "And you're a bloody captain! I'm in my right mind, too, and I'll break you, by God, if you don't attend to me this minute. So ... set--them--loose! Be a good chap, Clem--very well?"

So he gave the orders and they turned them free, and the young lieutenant knelt beside me with the water bottle, very respectful and moist-eyed.

"That was merciful," says he.

"Merciful be damned." says I. "The way things are hereabouts, one of 'em's probably Lord Canning."

•

It was late autumn before I was up and about again and had received word from Campbell that I might go home. Before I left, though, I made a visit to Kotah-ki-serai to have a look at the spot where Lakshmibai's people had made a little shrine to her, near the nullah.

They had cremated her, Hindoo fashion, but there was this little painted temple as a memorial, withered flowers and wreaths still round it. I mooched about, scuffing the dust with my boots, while a few old niggers, squatting under the thorns, watched me curiously. There wasn't much sign of a skirmish where she'd died--a few trifles of broken gear, a rusty stirrup, that sort of thing. I thought of her and it seemed to me that she'd done the thing that mattered to her more than life--she hadn't given up her Jhansi. As to what she may have felt about me, I'd never know--and it didn't matter now. I'd always remember those eyes above the veil and the soft lips brushing my cheek. Aye, well. Damned good-looking girl.

I went up the Agra Trunk on my way home and down to Cawnpore, where there were letters waiting for me. One was from Billy Russell, the Times correspondent I'd known in the Crimea. He was at Allahabad, following the seat of government, as he put it, and he asked me to stop off and celebrate with him. There were several letters from Elspeth, in her usual rattlepated style, full of loving slush about her clear, darling champion, whom she was yearning to clasp again to her loving bosom (Hear! Hear! thinks I) when he returned with laurels fresh upon his brow. (She absolutely did write like this; came from reading novels, I suspect.)

When I got off the train at Allahabad, Russell was at the station with a gharry to meet me. He was all beams and whiskers as usual, full of fun and demanding my news of the Jhansi and Gwalior affairs. He already knew the essentials, of course, "But it's the spice and colour I'm after, old fellow, and devil a bit of that d'ye get in dispatches. This business of your stealing into the Jezebel of Jhansi's fortress in disguise, now--eh?"

I parried his questions, grinning, as we bowled away towards the fort, and then he said. "I've got your prize money safe. It's about all you've had out o' this campaign, ain't it?---bar a few wounds and grey hairs."

I knew what he meant, blast him. While orders, ribbons and medals had been flying about like hail among our heroes, devil a nod had come my way. In official eyes, my service must have looked a pretty fair frost. I'd failed in the original mission Pam had given me and Rose had been damned stuffy that the plan to save Lakshmibai had come adrift. Lord Canning, he'd said, would be profoundly disappointed--as though it were my fault, the ungrateful bastard. But these are the things that matter and while honours were being showered on other men, poor old Flash would be lucky to get an address of welcome and a knife-and-fork supper at Ashby town hall.

"Slowcoach is a lord now," says Billy, "and there must be fifty Crosses flying about and God knows how many titles. I wonder whether a leaderette in the old Thunderer might stir up something for you? Can't have the Horse Guards neglectin' our best men."

I liked the sound of that, rather, but as he conducted me across the hall, where the Sikh sentries stood and the punkahs hissed, I thought it best to say I didn't mind, really--and then I found that he was grinning all over his whiskers as he ushered me through a doorway and I stopped in amazement.

It was a big, airy place, half office and half drawing room, with a score of people standing at the far end, beyond the fine Afghan carpet, all looking in my direction. There was Campbell, with his wrinkled Scotch face; Mansfield, smiling and toying with his dark whiskers; Macdonald, grinning openly; and Hope Grant, stern and straight. In their midst was a slim civilian in a white morning coat, with a handsome woman beside him; it took me a moment to realize that they were Lord and Lady Canning.

Then Russell was pushing me forward and Canning was smiling and shaking hands. I was quite taken aback to be thrust, into this company so unexpected--what was this Canning was saying? "Distinguished conduct on numerous occasions ... Afghanistan, Balaclava, Central Asia ... lately, and most exemplary, service in the insurrection of the Bengal Army ... gallant conduct in the defence of Cawnpore ... service of the most dangerous and difficult nature in the Gwalior campaign ... warmest approval of Her Majesty ... recognition of conduct far beyond the call of duty...."

I listened to all this in a daze and then Campbell, taking something from Canning, was coming up to me, glowering and harrumphing. "It is at my perr-sonal request that I have been pur-meeted tae bestow...." He reached up and I felt a sudden keen pain in my left tit as he stuck a pin in it.

I gasped and looked down--and there it was on its ribbon, a shabby-looking little bronze cross against my jacket. Then Lady Canning was leading the clapping and Campbell was pumping my hand.

"The Order o' the Victoria Cross," says he.

I was red in the face, I knew, and almost in tears as they clustered round me, shaking hands and slapping me on the back. And then, in the august presence of the commander in chief and the governor-general, somebody started to sing For He's a Jolly Good Fellow. It went on until Canning led me out onto the verandah. In the garden, there was a crowd of soldiers and civilians--bearded Sikhs and ugly little Goorkhas, Devil's Own and Highlanders, artillerymen and sappers, chaps in white coats and sun helmets, ladies in garden-party dresses. Someone shouted, "Hip, hip, hip!" and the crashing "Hurrah!" sounded three times, and a tiger.

I looked out at them through a mist of tears and saw beyond them the Gwalior cannon muzzle and the Cawnpore barricade and the burning lines of Meerut and the battery reek of Balaclava--and I thought, By God, you don't deserve it, you shifty old bastard of a Flashy. But if they are handing out medals for luck, and survival through sheer funk and suffering ignobly borne, then grab 'em with both hands. How little you know, I thought, or you'd be howling for my blood instead of cheering me--you honest, sturdy asses. Or maybe you wouldn't, for even if you knew the truth about me, you wouldn't believe it.

Then Lady Canning smiled at me and said, "What a gratifying experience to relate to your children, Colonel--and to Lady Flashman."

When the last words sank in, my legs went weak and I absolutely believe I said, "Hey?" Canning and his wife both laughed politely at my bewilderment and he looked at her with fond reproval, saying. "That must be under the rose, my dear. But, quite privately, Colonel, Her Majesty wished to distinguish your services by an additional mark of favour. She has been graciously pleased to create you a knight of the Bath."

I suppose I was already numb with shock, for I didn't faint or gape with disbelief. I blew my nose in my emotion. Who but little Vicky would have thought to pile a knighthood on top of the V. C.? By God, wasn't it bloody famous? That astonishing woman--I remembered how she'd blushed and looked bashful that time years before when she'd hung the Queen' Medal on me. I'd thought, aye, cavalry whiskers will catch 'em every time--and apparently still did.

1Until the discovery of the Flashman papers, Lyster (later General Sir Harry Hamon Lyster, V. C.) was the sole authority on this plan. Rose had confided the plan to him in strictest confidence and it was not until the publication of Henry L. Lyster Denny's "Memorials of an Ancient House" in 1913 that the story came out--substantially as Flashman recounts it.

2The battle on the Betwa (April 1, 1858) was an example of Rose's coolness and tactical brilliance. He turned from the siege of Jhansi and attacked the new rebel force, which outnumbered him ten to one. Rose led the cavalry charge and routed Tantia's army.

3About 20 miles from Jhansi, British cavalry under Lieutenant Dowker caught up with the Rani's party. According to popular tradition (now confirmed by Flashman), it was she herself who wounded Dowker.

4Accounts of her death differ, but Flashman's accords with the generally accepted version that she was killed when the Eighth Hussars charged her camp at Pool Bagh. She was seen in the melee with her horse's reins in her mouth. She was struck by a bullet, crossed swords with a trooper and was cut down. According to tradition, she gave her priceless necklace of Sindhia to an attendant as she was dying. Her battlefield tent contained a full-length mirror, books, pictures and her silk swing.

5 Captain Clement Heneage look part in the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava and also charged with the Eighth Hussars in the action of June 17, 1858, in which the Rani of Jhansi was killed. Flashman's misspelling may have arisen through his never having seen the name written.

This is the third and final installment of "Flashman in the Great Game."