Don't go out looking to buy it just yet, however. I feel that I say that about every Flashman book. Even Flashman and the Great Game which I don't remember liking, was probably my favorite at the time.
He shot me a look, his brow darkening, suspecting insolence but not sure. “Thank you,” snaps he, and showed me his shoulder.
“Treaty all settled, too, I believe,” says I genially, but loud enough to cause heads to turn. Paddy had stopped talking to Gilbert and Mackeson, Havelock was frowning under his beetle-brows, and Nicholson and Hope Grant and a dozen others were watching me curiously. Hardinge himself came round impatiently, affronted at my familiarity, and Lawrence was at my elbow, twitching my sleeve to come away.
“Good bandobast all round,” says I, “but one of the clauses will need a little arrangement, I fancy. Well, ’tain’t a clause, exactly… more of an understanding, don’t you know –”
“Are you intoxicated, sir? I advise you to go to your quarters directly!”
“Stone cold sober, excellency, I assure you. The Leith police dismisseth us. British constitution. No, you see, one of the treaty clauses – or rather the understanding I mentioned – can’t take effect without my assistance. So before I take my leave –”
“Major Lawrence, be good enough to conduct this officer –”
“No, sir, hear me out, do! It’s the great diamond, you see – the Koh-i-Noor, which the Sikhs are to hand over. Well, they can’t do that if they haven’t got it, can they? So perhaps you’d best give it ’em back first – then they can present it to you all official-like, with proper ceremony… Here, catch!”
Fraser, George MacDonald - Flashman and the Mountain of Light (p. 337)
Again, not the best last lines. One must kind of have read the entirity to understand it all. I did catch this and think it was worthwhile to say the least.
Time for a brisk stroll in the cold night air, I decided. We were stopping in Gough’s camp by Sobraon, so that he and Hardinge could bicker over the next move, and I sauntered along the lines in the frosty dark, listening to our artillery firing a royal salute in celebration of Smith’s victory at Aliwal; barely a mile away I could see the watch-fires of the Khalsa entrenchments in the Sutlej bend, and as the crash of our guns died away, hanged if the enemy didn’t reply with a royal salute of their own, and their bands playing… you’ll never guess what. In some ways it was the eeriest thing in that queer campaign – the silence in our own lines as the gunsmoke drifted overhead, the golden moon low in the purple sky, shining on the rows of tents and the distant twinkling fires, and over the dark ground between, the solemn strains of “God Save the Queen"! I never heard it played so well as by the Khalsa, and for the life of me I don’t know to this day whether it was in derision or salute; with Sikhs, you can never tell.
If you don't like "the golden moon in the purple sky, shining on the rows of tents and the distant twinkling fires" then I just don't know if I can help you much.
Still and all this book did make me want to go back and read the original Flashman and relive his experiences in Afghanistan.
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