Stay to govern

      “And now you leave us without a king! We were born in bondage, and must die as slaves. Why do you not stay to govern?”
     I told him we didn’t want to, and ’twas up to him and his like to govern themselves.
      “You mean we must cut each other’s throats,” grumbles he. “This is Africa.”

Flashman on the March, p.279, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Earthly paradise

      I’m no old Africa hand, and what I’d seen of Abyssinia so far had jaundiced rather than impressed, but I’m bound to say that the Lake Tana country is as close to earthly paradise as I’d ever struck, for scenery at least. From Azez to Gorgora on the northern shore is nothing out of the ordinary, but the lake itself beats anything in Switzerland or Italy, a great blue shimmering inland sea fringed by tropical forest, hills, and meadows, for all the world like a glorious garden of exotic flowers and shrubs in groves of splendid trees and ferns.


Flashman on the March, p.128, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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Certain defeat

. . . for perhaps the first time in her long and turbulent history Britain was going into a war which everyone believed we were going to lose. Everyone, that is, except Bughunter Bob Napier.


Flashman on the March, p.27, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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Handsome, cruel, and bloodthirsty

      To begin with, you must understand that the Abyssinians are like no other Africans, being some kind of Semitic folk who came from Arabia in the far-off time, handsome, cruel, and bloodthirsty, but civilised beyond any in the continent bar the Egyptians . . .


Flashman on the March, p.22, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Little by little

A land of mystery and terror and cruelty, and the loveliest women in all Africa . . . a smiling golden nymph in her little leather tunic, teasing me as she sat by a woodland stream plaiting her braids . . . a gaudy barbarian queen lounging on cushions surrounded by her tame lions . . . a tawny young beauty remarking to my captors: “If we feed him into the fire, little by little, he will speak . . .”
       Aye, it’s and interesting country, Abyssinia.


Flashman on the March, p.14, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Napier to you

      “Napier? Not Bob the Bughunter? What the blazes is he doing in Abyssinia?”


Flashman on the March, p.2, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Their terrible bass chorus

. . . Death sweeping towards us at that fearful thunderous jog-trot that made the earth tremble beneath our very feet, while the spears crashed on the ox-hide shields, and the dust rolled up in a bank before them as they chanted out their terrible bass chorus: “Uzitulele, kagali ’muntu!” — which, you’ll be enchanted to know, means roughly: “He is silent, he doesn’t start the attack.”


Flashman and the Tiger, p.275, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


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Out of Africa

…I could barely gasp one of Spring’s Latin tags: “Ex Africa semper aliquid novi,* by gum!”


*Out of Africa there is always something new


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.52, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Garryowen

…the man with the patched eye began to sing, and they all took it up, and as I drove off with Lanskey I heard the words of the Light Brigade canter fading behind me:

             In the place of water we’ll drink ale,
             An’ pay no reck’ning on the nail,
             No man for debt shall go to jail,
             While he can Garryowen hail.

    I’ve heard it from Afghanistan to Whithall, from the African veldt to drunken hunting parties in Rutland; heard it sounded on penny whistles by children and roared out in full-throated chorus by Custer’s 7th on the day of Greasy Grass…

Flashman at the Charge, p.122, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

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Sometimes I remember

God knows I’m no romantic adventurer, but sometimes I remember – and I’d like to run south again down to Africa with a fair wind. In a private yacht, with my youth, half a dozen assorted Parisian whores, the finest food and drink, and perhaps a German band. Aye, it’s a man’s life.

Flash For Freedom!, pp.62-63, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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