"Can you do it?"
He looked at me, grinning, and something in that happy bandit face started the alarms rumbling in my lower innards.
"That you shall tell us," says he. "Indeed, God has sent you here. Listen, now. What I have told you is sure information; every slave who labours on that beach at Fort Raim, unloading and piling baggage for those Ruski filth, is a man or a woman of our people—so that not a word is spoken in that camp, not a deed done, not a sentry relieves himself, but we know of it. We know to the last peck of rice, to the last horse-shoe, what supplies already lie on that beach, and we know, too, that when the powder-ships anchor off Fort Raim, they will be ringed about with guard-boats, so that not even a fish can swim through. So we cannot hope to mine or burn them by storm or surprise."
Well, that dished him, it seemed to me, but on he went, happily disposing of another possibility.
"Nor could we hope to drag the lightest of the few poor cannon we have to some place within shot of the ships. What then remains?" He smiled triumphantly and produced from his breast a roll of papers, written in Russian; it looked like a list.
"Did I not say we were well served for spies? This is a manifest of stores and equipment already landed, and lying beneath the awnings and in the sheds. My careful Silk One"—he bowed in her direction—"has had them interpreted, and has found an item of vast interest. It says—now listen, and bless the name of your own people, from whom this gift comes—it says: 'Twenty stands of British rocket artillery; two hundred boxes of cases.'"
He stopped, staring eagerly at me, and I was aware that they were all waiting expectantly.
"Congreves?" says I. "Well, what -"
"What is the range of such rockets?" asked Yakub Beg.
"Why—about two miles," I knew a bit about Congreves from my time at Woolwich. "Not accurate at that distance, of course; if you want to make good practice, then half a mile, three-quarters, but -"
"The ships will not be above half a mile from the shore," says he, softly. "And these rockets, from what I have heard, are fiercely combustible—like Greek fire! If one of them were to strike the upperworks of the steamer, or the wooden hull of the Mikhail -"
"We would have the finest explosion this side of Shaitan's lowest pit!" exulted Kutebar, thumping the table.
"And then—a Russian army without powder, with cannon that would be so much useless lumber, with soldiers armed for nothing better than a day's hunting!" cries Yakub. "They will be an army bahla dar!" (Literally, "wearing hunting gloves in one's belt", i.e. unarmed.)
For the life of me, I couldn't understand all this excitement.
"Forgive me," says I. "But the Ruskis have these rockets—you don't. And if you're thinking of stealing some of 'em, I'm sorry, Yakub, but you're eating green corn. D'ye know how much a single Congreve rocket-head weighs, without its stick? Thirty-two pounds. And the stick is fifteen feet long—and before you can fire one you have to have the firing-frame, which is solid steel weighing God knows what, with iron half-pipes. Oh, I daresay friend Kutebar here has some pretty thieves in his fighting-tail, but they couldn't hope to lug this kind of gear out from under the Russians' noses—not unseen. Dammit, you'd need a mule-train. And if, by some miracle, you did get hold of a frame and rockets, where would you find a firing-point close enough? For that matter, at two miles—maximum range, trained at fifty-five degrees—why, you could blaze away all night and never score a hit!"
I suddenly stopped talking. I'd been expecting to see their faces fall, but Yakub was grinning broader by the second, Kutebar was nodding grimly, even Sahib Khan was smiling.
"What's the joke, then?" says I. "You can't do it, you see."
"We do not need to do it," says Yakub, looking like a happy crocodile. "Tell me: these things are like great sky-rockets, are they not? How long would it take unskilled men—handless creatures like the ancient Kutebar, for example—to prepare and fire one?"
"To erect the frame?—oh, two minutes, for artillerymen. Ten times as long, probably, for your lot. Adjust the aim, light the fuse, and off she goes—but dammit, what's the use of this to you?"
"Yallah!" cries he, clapping his hands delightedly. "I should call you saped-pa—white foot, the bringer of good luck and good news, for what you have just told us is the sweetest tidings I have heard this summer." He reached over and slapped my knee. "Have no fear—we do not intend to steal a rocket, although it was my first thought. But, as you have pointed out, it would be impossible; this much we had realised. But my Silk One, whose mind is like the puzzles of her father's people, intricately simple, has found a way. Tell him, Kutebar."
"We cannot beat the Ruskis, even if we launch our whole power, five or six thousand riders, upon their beach camp and Fort Raim," says the old bandit. "They must drive us back with slaughter in the end. But"—he wagged a finger like an eagle's talon under my nose—"we can storm their camp by night, in one place, where these feringhi ra-kets are lying—and that is hard by the pier, in a little go-down.*(*Warehouse.) This our people have already told us. It will be a strange thing if, descending out of the night past Fort Raim like a thunderbolt, we cannot hold fifty yards of beach for an hour, facing both ways. And in our midst, we shall set up this ra-ket device, and while our riders hold the enemy at bay, our gunners can launch this fire of Eblis against the Ruski powder ships. They will be in fair range, not half a mile—and in such weather, with timbers as dry as sand, will not one ra-ket striking home be sufficient to burn them to Jehannum?"
"Why—yes, I suppose so—those Congreves burn like hell. But, man," I protested, "you'll never get off that beach alive—any of you! They'll ring your storming party in, and cut it down by inches—there are thirty thousand of them, remember? Even if you do succeed in blowing their ship to kingdom come, you'll lose—I don't know, a thousand, two thousand swords doing it."
"We shall have saved our country, too," says Yakub Beg, quietly. "And your India, Flashman bahadur. Like enough many will die on that beach—but better to save Khokand for a year, or perhaps even for a generation, and die like men, than see our country trampled by these beasts before the autumn comes." He paused. "We have counted the odds and the cost, and I ask your advice, as a soldier of experience, not on the matter of holding the beach and fighting off the Ruskis, for that is an affair we know better than you, but only as to these rockets. From what you have told us, I see that it can be done. Silk One"—he turned towards her, smiling and touching his brow—"I salute your woman's wit—again."
I looked at her with my skin crawling. She'd schemed up this desperate, doomed nonsense, in which thousands of men were going to be cut up, and there she sat, dusting her kitten's whiskers. Mind you, I didn't doubt, when I thought of the thing, that they could bring it off, given decent luck. Five thousand sabres, with the likes of Kutebar roaring about in the dark, could create havoc in that Russian camp, and probably secure a beachhead just long enough for them to turn the Russians' own rockets on the powder ships. And I knew any fool could lay and fire a Congreve. But afterwards? I thought of the shambles of that beach in the dark—and those rows of gallows outside Fort Raim.
And yet, there they sat, those madmen, looking as pleased as if they were going to a birthday party, Yakub Beg calling for coffee and sherbet, Kutebar's evil old face wreathed in happy smiles. Well, it was no concern of mine, if they wanted to throw their lives away—and if they did succeed in crippling the Russian invasion before it had even started, so much the better. It would be glad news to bring into Peshawar—by jove, I might even hint that I'd engineered the whole thing: if I didn't, the Press probably would. "British Officer's Extraordinary Adventure. Russian Plot Foiled by His Ingenuity. Tribal Life in the Khokand. Colonel Flashman's Remarkable Narrative." Yes, a few helpings of that would go down well … Elspeth would be in raptures … I'd be the lion of the day yet again …