Beyond all doubt

And blessed if he wasn’t bright-eyed with memory. “Give me your hand, old comrade, and welcome indeed, for I never was so pleased to see anyone, I can tell you!”
     That was the moment when I knew, beyond all doubt, that the doom had come upon me yet again.



Flashman on the March, p.48, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Clew up the heads

‘…here have I been keeping you in talk over these matters, when your most urgent desire has surely been for a moment privacy in which you might deliver up thanks to a merciful Heavenly Father for your delivery from all the dangers and tribulations you have undergone. Your pardon, sir.’
   My urgent need was in fact for an enormous brandy and a square meal, but I answered him with my wistful smile… ‘Indeed,’ says I, looking sadly reflective, ‘there is hardly a moment in these past few months that I have not spent in prayer.’
   He gripped my hand again, looking moist, and then, thank God, he remembered at last that I had a belly, and gave orders for food and a glass of spirits while he went off, excusing himself, to splice the binnacle or clew up the heads, I shouldn’t wonder.

Flash For Freedom!, p.120, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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The highest honour

We shook hands, and he drove off. I never spoke to him again. Years later, though, I told the American general, Robert Lee, of the incident, and he said Wellington was right – I had received the highest honour any soldier could hope for. But it wasn’t the medal; for Lee’s money it was Wellington’s hand.
  Neither, I may point out, had any intrinsic value.

Flashman, p.276, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

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