Flashman And The Tiger

"It’s a lie!" cries I. "It was all Spring’s idea—I knew nothing of it! Why, I even pleaded with him, I remember—but it was too late, don’t you see -? "

"Pleaded?" he scoffed. "When did you ever plead for anything except your own miserable self? What did you care, if a white child was left to the mercy of that … that gross black brute?" His eyes were darting about the room as he spoke, and his hand was shaking on the desk-top. "Two years I endured there—two years in that rotting jungle hell, praying for death, kicked and scourged and tortured by those animals … aye, you can stare in horror, you that left me to it! Two years—before I had the courage to run again, and by God’s grace was picked up by Portugee slavers, who carried me to the coast. Portugee scum, mark you—they saved me from the fate I’d been doomed to by fellow Englishmen."

"But I’d no hand in that! I tell you, it was no fault of mine! By God, it must have been frightful, Moran—I don’t wonder you’re … well, upset … perfectly appalling, on my word … but it was all Charity Spring’s doing, don’t you see? I’m clean innocent—you can’t bear me a grudge for what that scoundrel did! Why, he’d kidnapped me, in the first place—"

"Spring’s long gone to his account," says he, and laughed harshly. "So have several others. Oh, yes, I marked you all down for settlement." For a fleeting second he met my eye. "You remember Sullivan, the Yankee bucko mate? I got him in Galveston in ’69.[14] And the surgeon—what was his name? An Irishman. He went in Bombay. I took ’em as I found ’em, you see—and while I was making my own career, in the Indian Army, I often thought about you. But I never had the chance—till now."

There was a moment’s silence, while I stood like a snared rabbit, too stunned and scared to speak, and he went on.

"But you’re too old to be worth killing, Flashman. Oh, it would be easy enough—you’ve seen me, and you possibly know I’m rated the best big-game shot in India, if not the world. If General Flashman were found with his head blown off on his Leicestershire estate—who’d ever suspect the eminent and respectable Colonel John Sebastian Moran?" He sneered and shook his head. "Poor sport. But little Miss Selina—there’s a worthwhile quarry, if you like. I saw how to strike at you, the night I saw her at the theatre. And you, you foul old tyke, can do nothing about it. For if she shrinks from me at the last—well, young Stanger’s name will be blasted, and her hopes with it—and yours. A splendid scandal there’ll be." He leaned against the mantel again, his thumbs in his weskit, and gloated at me.. "Either way, you’ll pay—for what you did to me. Personally, I think the young lady will save her lover’s honour at the expense of her own—I hope so, anyway. But I don’t much mind."

This was appalling—for the fellow was mad, I was sure, eaten up with his hatred and lust for vengeance. And he had marked down Selly, to strike at me … and he was right, she’d sacrifice herself to shame to save Stanger—and if she didn’t, his life and hers would both be ruined. I could have wept, at the thought of her frail, tender innocence at the mercy of this crazy, murderous ogre—I absolutely did weep, begging him to accept any price, offering to ransom her as high as twenty thousand, or thirty (I called a halt there, I remember), promising to use my influence to obtain him patronage, or a title, literally pleading at the swine’s feet and drawing his attention to my white hairs and old age—and he simply laughed at me.

So I raged at him, threatening, vowing I’d be his ruin somehow—I’d kill him, I said, even if I swung for it, and he just jeered in my face.

"Oh, how I wish you’d try! How I would admire to see that! Go home and get your pistol and your black mask, and collect a gang of bullies—why don’t you? Or cross the Channel with me, and we’ll shoot it out on the sands! I can just see that! You pathetic old corpse!"

In the end he kicked me out, and I slunk off home in a rage of such fear and frustration and misery as I’ve seldom felt before. I was helpless—he couldn’t be bought, he couldn’t be moved, he couldn’t be bullied or bluffed. He was even invulnerable against the last resort of violence—oh, he might be near sixty, but his hand was still rock-steady and his eye clear, and even if there had been such a thing as a hired gun in the Home Counties, what chance would he have stood against the lightning skill I’d seen proved on Ketshwayo’s Zulus? No—Moran held all the aces. And Selina, my precious little darling, was doomed. I went home and drank myself blind.