Free and easy style

. . . my bootneck sergeant scowled disapproval; he wasn’t use to the free and easy style of these Navy youngsters who couldn’t help bring their fifth-form ways to sea, and treated their men more like a football of which they were the captain, than a crew. It was natural enough: the cornet or ensign in the Army, when he joined his regiment for the first time, entered a world of rigid formality and discipline, but here was this lad just out of his ’teens with a little floating kingdom all his own, sent to fight slavers and pirates, chase smugglers, shepherd pilgrims, and escort the precious bullion on which a whole British army would depend — and not a senior to turn to for advice or guidance, but only his own sense and judgment.


Flashman on the March, p.17, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



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In my callow youth

      There was a time, in my callow youth, when the discovery that I was running not opium but guns would have had me bolting frantically for the nearest patch of timber, protesting that it was nothing to do with me, constable, and the chap in charge would be along in a moment.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.28, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.

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