Crept as fast

      On that happy thought I put up my empty piece, transferred the knife from my boot to my pocket, and crept as fast as might be down the stairs with my heart against my back teeth.

Flashman and the Tiger, p.136, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.



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Hard as a hammer

. . .he listened with his bare forearms set on the table, John Bull to the life; he’d be fifty years then, the Big Barbarian, as the Chinese called him, bald as an egg save for a few little white wisps, with his bulldog lip and sudden barks of anger or laughter. A peppery old buffer, and a deal kinder than he looked — how many ambassadors would call on a colonel’s wife to carry a letter to her man? — and the shrewdest diplomat of his day, hard as a hammer and subtle as a Spaniard. Best of all he had common sense.


Flashman and the Dragon, p.162, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.



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Give them a chance

One meets them, of course. I’ve known hundreds. Give them a chance to do what they call their duty, let them see the hope of martyrdom – they’ll fight their way on to the cross and bawl for the man with the hammer and the nails.

Flashman, p.234, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes.