…it looked very gallant, and has since been commemorated in oils, with camels and niggers* looking on admiringly, and the Chiefs all shaking hands. (I’m there too, like John the Baptist on horseback, with one aimless hand up in the air, which is rot, because at the time I was squatting in the latrine working the dysentery bugs out of my system and wishing I was dead.)
Flashman in the Great Game, p.261, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.
*Flashman's use of racial epitahs is a continuing problem for more enlightened, contemporary readers. The inclusion of these passages should not be taken as tacit support of his misanthropic, 19th century view of race relations.
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