Sharpe's Siege

CHAPTER 18

In the morning the rain fell in a sustained cloudburst. It hammered and seethed and bounced on the fort and ran from the ramparts to slop in bucketfuls on to the puddled courtyard. It seemed impossible for rain to be so savage, yet it persisted. It drummed on men’s shakoes, it flooded into the galleries carved into the ramparts, and its noise made even the firing of the twelve-pounders seem dull. It was like the rains before the great flood; a deluge.

It doused the cooking fires of the French and flooded the hovels where Calvet’s men had tried to sleep. It turned the powder in musket pans to gritty mud. The fire-rate of the artillery was slowed because each serge bag of powder had to be protected from the rain and each vent had to be covered until the last second before the portfire was touched. The artillery colonel cursed that the damned British had burned out the mill’s roof with their sortie, and cutsed again because his howitzers had to give up the unequal struggle when their pits filled with yellow-coloured floodwater.

“Bacon for breakfast!” Calvet spoke with delighted anticipation.

His cooks, working under a roof, fried bacon for the general. The smell tormented those poor souls who huddled against hovel walls and cursed the rain, the mud, the god-damns, and the war.

The cavalry, who had vainly cast south for Sharpe’s force, had been sent north in the dawn. A cavalry sergeant, his cloak plastered wet to his horse’s rump, splashed back with news that, because the wind was so small this morning, the

Thuella was being towed down the Arcachon channel by two longboats.

“Bugger the wind,” Calvet said, “and bugger the rain.” He stumped through mud to the sand-dunes and stared north. Far off, drab, black, and with wet sails dropping from her yards, the big schooner was just visible. “We won’t attack,” Calvet growled, “till the damn thing’s in place.”

“Perhaps,” Favier ventured cautiously, “Captain Killick’s guns won’t fire in this weather?”

“Don’t be a damned fool. If anyone can make guns fire in the wet it has to be a sailor, doesn’t it?” Calvet took out his glass, wiped the lenses, and stared at the fortress. The gate was a heap of rubble, a mound of wet stone, a causeway to victory. He went back to his bacon with confidence that this morning’s business would not take long. The British rifles would be useless in this rain and their lime would be turned into whitewash.

Calvet looked at his orderly who was putting an edge on to his sword. “Make sure the point’s wicked!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Won’t be a day for the edge, Favier.” Calvet knew that wet uniforms resisted a sword cut much better than dry. “It’ll be a day for stabbing. In and out, Favier, in and out!” Calvet, feeling far better for his breakfast, glanced at the door where Ducos had suddenly appeared. “You look damp, Ducos, and I ate your bacon.”

Ducos did not care that the general goaded him. Today he would capture Richard Sharpe and it would be a consolation to Pierre Ducos amidst the tragedies that beset France. “There’s a wind stirring.”

“Splendid.”

“The schooner should be anchored soon.”

“God bless our allies,” Calvet said. “It might have taken them twenty damned years to join the war, but better late than never.” He went to the doorway and saw that the Thuella had indeed used the freshening wind to hasten her progress. A splash of water showed as the forward anchor was let go. “I think,” Calvet said as the schooner’s gunports opened, “that we are at last ready.” He called for his horse and, from its saddle,“ saw his wet, dispirited troops forming into their attack column. ”We shall give our gallant allies twenty minutes of target practice,“ Calvet said, ”then advance.“

Ducos was staring at the Thuella. ‘If Killick opens fire at all,“ he said. The schooner lay silent in the channel. Her wet sails were being furled on to the yards, but otherwise there was no sign of movement on the sleek vessel. ”He’s not going to fire!“ Ducos said savagely.

“Give him time.” Calvet also watched the Thuella and imagined the rain seething on the wooden decks.

“He’s broken his word,” Ducos said bitterly, then, quite suddenly, the schooner’s battle ensign broke open and flames stabbed across the water, smoke billowed above the channel, and the Thuella’s broadside opened the final attack on the Teste de Buch.

Cornelius Killick’s qualms about honour had evidently been settled, and the American had opened fire.

The American grapeshot whistled over Sharpe’s head. A few balls struck the flag of St George, but the rest went high above the fortress. Sharpe sat beneath the wet flag, his back against the ramparts. He was weary to the very heart of his bones. He had returned to the fort a half hour before sunrise, narrowly evading French cavalry, and now, after yet another night’s lack of sleep, he faced a French attack.

“Are the Frogs moving?” he shouted to Frederickson who waited beside the breach.

“No, sir.”

Sharpe’s wounded men, bloodied bandages soaking in the rain, lay oh the western rampart. Marines, faces pale in the wan, wet light, crouched behind granite as a second American broadside spat overhead. Sharpe, huddling low, nodded to Harper. “Now.”

The huge Irishman used his sword bayonet to cut the wet ropes which bound the flagpole to the merlon. He sawed, cursing the tough sisal, but one by one the strands parted and, just after Killick’s third broadside, the pole toppled. The flag of St George, its white tablecloth stained red by dye from the sleeves which had formed the cross, fell.

“Cease firing!” Sharpe heard Killick’s voice distinct over the water. “Stop muzzles!”

Sharpe stood. The American captain, wearing a blue jacket in honour of this day, was already climbing down to one of the Thuella’s two longboats. The American crew, grinning by their guns, stared at the fortress.

Which Richard Sharpe had just surrendered.

General Calvet also stared at the fort. The smoke from the American broadsides drifted in the small wind, obscuring the view, but Calvet was sure the British had struck their colours.

“Do I keep firing, sir?” The artillery colonel, uniform soaked by rain, splashed through puddles towards the general’s horse.

“They’re not showing a white flag,” Pierre Ducos said, “so keep firing.”

“Wait!” Calvet snapped open his glass. He saw figures on the ramparts, but could not tell what happened. “Colonel Favier!”

“Sir?”

“Go forward with a flag of truce,” Calvet ordered, “and find out what the bastards are doing. No, wait!” At last Calvet could see something that made sense. Men had come to the southern wall which faced the French and there they shook out a great cloth to hang down the wet, battered ramparts. The cloth signified that the fortress of Teste de Buch was no longer held by the British, but had been surrendered to the United States of America. “God damn,”

Calvet said as he stared at the Stars and Stripes, “God bloody hell and damn.”

Cornelius Killick, standing beside Sharpe on the southern ramparts, stared at the great French column that waited beside the village. “If they choose to fight, Major, you know I can’t fire on them.”

“I agree it would be difficult for you.” Sharpe opened his glass and stared at the French until the rain bleared the outer lens. He snapped the tubes shut. “Do I have your permission, Captain Killick, to put my wounded on board?”

“You have my permission,” Killick spoke solemnly, as if to invest this agreed charade with dignity. “You also have my permission to keep your sword that you failed to offer me.”

“Thank you.” Sharpe grinned, then turned to the western ramparts. “Captain Palmer! You may begin the evacuation! Wounded and baggage first!” All the packs of Sharpe’s small garrison were heaped next to the wounded men, for he was determined to leave the French nothing.

Sharpe’s men, sensing that their ordeal was over, relaxed. They knew that Major Sharpe had gone into the night, and the rumour had spread that he had talked to the Americans and the Americans had agreed to take them away. The American Colours, bright on the fort’s outer face, testified to that deliverance. “It’s all because we didn’t hang the buggers,” a Marine sergeant opined. “We scratched their backsides, now they scratch ours.”

Rifleman Hernandez, watching the French column, wondered aloud whether he would now be going to America and, if so, whether there were Frenchmen there waiting to be killed. William Frederickson assured him they were not bound for the United States. Frederickson was staring at the French and saw three horsemen suddenly spur forward. He cupped his hands towards Sharpe. “Sir! Crapauds coming!”

Sharpe did not want the three enemy officers to come too close to the fort, so he ran, jumped from the broken ramparts, and sprawled in an ungainly, bruising fall on the jagged summit of the breach. He clambered down the outer stones, then leaped the gap on to the roadway. Frederickson and Killick followed more slowly.

Sharpe waited in the narrow cutting that led through the glacis. The road was thick with musket balls that had already half settled into the wet, sandy surface. He held up a hand as the horsemen came close.

Favier was the leading horseman. Behind Favier was a general, cloak open to show the braid on his jacket, and behind the general was Ducos. Sharpe, warned by Killick that he might see his old enemy, stared with loathing, but he had nothing to say to Ducos. He spoke instead to Colonel Favier. “Good morning, Colonel.”

“What’s the meaning of that?” Favier pointed to the American flag.

“It means,” Sharpe spoke loud enough for Ducos to hear, “that we have surrendered ourselves to the armed forces of the United States and put ourselves under the protection of her President and Congress.” Killick had given him the words last night, and Sharpe saw the flicker of anger that they provoked in Pierre Ducos.

There was silence. Frederickson and Killick joined Sharpe, then the general demanded a translation that Favier provided. Rain dripped from bridles and sword scabbards.

Favier looked back at Sharpe. “As allies of America we will take responsibility for Captain Killick’s prisoners.” He doffed his hat to Killick. “We congratulate you, Captain.”

“My pleasure,” Killick said. “And my prisoners. I’m taking them aboard.”

Again there was a pause for the exchange to be translated and, when Favier looked back, his face was angry. “This is the soil of France. If British troops surrender on this soil then those troops become prisoners of the French government.”

Sharpe dug his heel into the wet, sandy road. “This is British soil, Favier, captured by my men, held by my men against your best efforts, and now surrendered to the United States. Doubtless you can negotiate with those States for its return.”

“I think the United States would agree to return it.” Killick, amused by the pomposities of the moment, smiled.

There was a fall of dislodged stone from the breach and all six men, their attention drawn by the noise, saw the huge figure of Patrick Harper, head bare, standing on the breach’s summit. Over his right shoulder, like a dreadful threat, lay the French engineer’s axe that Sharpe had used the day before. Favier looked back to Killick. “It seems you do not disarm your prisoners, Mr Killick?”

“Captain Killick,” Killick corrected Favier. “You have to understand, Colonel, that Major Sharpe has sworn a solemn oath not to take up arms against the United States of America. Therefore I had no need to remove his weapons, nor those of his men.”

“And France?” Ducos spoke for the first time.

“France?” Killick inquired innocently.

“It would be normal, Captain Killick, to demand that a captured prisoner should not take up arms against the allies of your country. Or had you forgotten that your country and mine are bound by solemn treaty?”

Killick shrugged. “I suppose that in the flush of my victory, Major, I forgot that clause.”

“Then impose it now.”

Killick looked at Sharpe, the movement of his head spilling water from the peaks of his bicorne hat. “Well, Major?”

“The terms of the surrender,” Sharpe said, “cannot be changed.”

Calvet was demanding a translation. Favier and Ducos jostled each other’s words in their eagerness to reveal the perfidy of this surrender.

“They’re all Anglo-Saxons,” Ducos said bitterly.

Calvet asked a question in French, was answered by Killick in that language, and Frederickson smiled. “He asked,” he said to Sharpe, “whether Killick’s taking us to America. Killick said that was where the Thuella was sailing.”

“And doubtless,” Ducos had edged his horse closer so he could stare down at Sharpe, “you have relieved Captain Killick of his sworn oath not to fight against the British?”

“Yes,” Sharpe said, “I have.” That was the devil’s pact, made in the seething rainstorm of last night. Sharpe had promised that neither he nor his garrison would fight against the United States, and in return Sharpe had relieved Killick of his own irksome oath. The price was this surrender that would make the escape of Sharpe’s men possible.

Ducos sneered at Sharpe. “And you think a privateer captain honours his promises?”

“I honoured the promise I made you,” Killick said. “I fired till the enemy surrendered.”

“You have no standing in this matter!” Ducos snapped the words. “You are not a military officer, Mr Killick; you are a pirate.”

Killick opened his mouth to reply, but Ducos scornfully wheeled his horse away. He spoke to the general, chopping the air with his thin, gloved hand to accentuate his words.

“I don’t think they’re impressed,” Frederickson said softly.

“I don’t give a damn,” Sharpe growled. The boats must already be taking the wounded to the Thuella, and the Marines would be following. The longer the French argued, the more men would be saved.

Favier looked down sadly at Sharpe. “This is unworthy, Major.”

“No more so, Colonel, than your own feeble effort to make me march to Bordeaux as a Major General.”

Favier shrugged. “That was a ruse de guerre, a legitimate manouevre.”

“Just as it is legitimate for me to surrender to whom I wish.”

“To fight again?” Favier smiled. “I think not. This is cynical expediency, Major, not honour.”

General Calvet was feeling cheated. His men had died in the struggle for this effort and no cheap surrender would deny them their victory. He looked at Sharpe and asked a question.

“He wants to know,” Frederickson said, “whether you truly rose from the ranks.”

“Yes,” Sharpe said.

Calvet smiled and spoke again. “He says it will be a pity to kill you,” Frederickson said.

Sharpe shrugged as reply, and Calvet spoke harsh, curt words to Favier, who, in turn, interpreted for Sharpe. “The general informs you, Major Sharpe, that we do not accept your arrangements. You have one minute to surrender to us.” Favier looked to Killick. “And we advise you to remove your ship from the vicinity of this fortress. If you interfere now, Mr Killick, you may be sure that the strongest representations will be made to your government. Good day to you.” He wheeled his horse to follow Calvet and Ducos back across the esplanade.

“Bugger me,” Killick said. “Are they going to fight?”

“Yes,” Sharpe said, “they are.”

The Marines were clambering up the side of the Thuella, leaving the Riflemen alone in the fortress. It would be close, damned close. “Take your flag, Captain,” Sharpe said to Killick.

The American was watching the French column reform. “There’s hundreds of the bastards.”

“Only two thousand.” Sharpe was scraping with a stone at a nick on the fore-edge of his sword.

“I wish…” Killick began instinctively.

“You can’t,” Sharpe said. “This is our fight. And if we don’t make it, sail without us. Lieutenant Minver!”

“Sir?”

“Your men next! Get them down to the water. Regimental Sergeant Major!”

Harper was inside the fortress at the foot of the breach. “Sir?”

“Block it!”

Harper waited with a squad of men beside a cheval-de-frise made from a scorched beam to which had been lashed and nailed fifty captured French bayonets. The blades jutted at all angles to make a savage barricade that Harper, with six Riflemen, now struggled to carry to the breach’s crest. As they did, so the renewed fire of the twelve-pounders struck the breach’s outer face. A chip of stone whistled over Harper’s head, but he heaved at his end of the beam, bellowed at the Riflemen to push, and the great spiked bulwark was slammed into place.

Sharpe was on the west wall. Minver’s men were climbing down ladders to the sand, while the first of Killick’s longboats was pushing away from the Thuella. Sharpe guessed it would take ten minutes to board Minver’s company safely, and another five before the longboats would return for the last of the Teste de Buch’s defenders. The tide in the channel swept far too strongly to risk swimming to the safety of the schooner, so Sharpe must fight until the boats could carry all his men away. Killick, carrying his American flag to safety, paused by Sharpe and stared at the French horde. “Do I wish you luck, Major?”

“No.”

Killick seemed torn by his desire to stay and witness what promised to be a rare fight, and his need to hasten the longboats in the rain-flecked channel. „I’ll have a bottle of brandy waiting in my cabin, Major.“

“I’ll look forward to it.” Sharpe was unable to express his emotions, instead, awkwardly, he thanked the American for keeping their pact.

Killick shrugged. “Why thank me? Hell, I get a chance to fight you bastards again!”

“But your government. They’ll make trouble because you helped me?”

“As long as I make money,” Killick said, “the American government won’t give a damn.“ The French drums began their sound, then, just as suddenly, stopped. The American stared at the column. ”Two thousand of them, and fifty of you?“

That’s about it.“

Killick laughed, and his voice was suddenly warm. “Hell, Major, I’m glad I’m not one of those poor bastards. I’ll have the brandy waiting, just make sure you come and drink it.” He nodded, then walked towards his boats.

Sharpe walked to the broken end of the rampart above the breach where half of Frederickson’s company was stationed. The other half, with Frederickson himself, was in the courtyard.

Harper was still on the breach, jamming captured bayonets among the stones. The rain still crashed down, washing mortar and dust away from the breach and spreading dirty yellow floodwater out of the ditch.

The French drums, made soggy by rain, sounded again from the south. A Rifleman licked cracked lips. The rain, grey and depressing, blurred the massed French bayonets above which, glinting gold, Sharpe saw an enemy standard. Such, he thought, was the vision of death in the morning. The French were coming.

Commandant Henri Lassan would march, at his own request, in the front rank of the column. He had written to his mother, apologizing to her that he had lost the fortress and telling her that she could nevertheless be proud of her son. He had sent her his rosary and asked that the shining, much-fingered beads be laid to rest in the family’s chapel.

“They’re boarding the schooner,” Favier reported to Calvet. The northern attack had been abandoned and everything would be thrown into this one, final storm. Favier thought that was a mistake. The northern attack could have driven itself between the fortress and the water, blocking the garrison’s escape, but Calvet was not worried.

“The cavalry can play on the beach. Send them an order.” Calvet dismounted, then drew his sword that had once impaled two Cossacks together like chickens on a spit. The general shrugged off his cloak so that his men could see the gold braid on his jacket, then walked to the column’s head and raised his stubby, muscular arms. “Children! Children!” The drummers, hushed by officers, rested their sticks.

Calvet’s voice reached to the very last rank of the column. “They’re colder than you are! They’re wetter than you are! They’re more frightened than you are! And you’re French! In the name of the Emperor! In the name of France! Follow!”

The drummers hauled leather rings up ropes to tighten wet skins then, as the cheer caught like fire in the ranks, the sticks started their tattoo again. Like a monster, lurching and shuddering, driven by the heartbeat of the drumsticks and bright with bayonets and given courage by a brave general, the column marched forward.

One of the German Riflemen, his left arm bandaged, played a flute. The tune came thin through the pouring rain to fill Sharpe with melancholy. He had always wanted to play the flute, but had never learned. There was small comfort in such thoughts so he dismissed them, wondering instead whether the boats had reached the shore to pick up Minver’s men, but he could not see from beside the breach, nor could he spare the time to go and look.

The French column, swaying left and right as it marched in step, was halfway to the fortress. Sharpe’s men knew not to fire, but Sharpe guessed half of the rain-sodden rifles would not fire at all when the time came. The rain dripped down his sleeves, soaked his overalls, and squelched in his boots. Goddamned bloody treacherous mucky rain.

Harper, Frederickson, and a dozen Riflemen were crouching high on the breach, just behind the cheval-de-frise. Frederickson watched Sharpe, who shook his head. Not yet, not yet. The German flautist carefully wrapped his instrument in wash-leather, tucked it into his jacket, and picked up his rifle that had layers of sacking wrapped round the lock.

The French twelve-pounder guns had ceased firing. The gunners, knowing that this was no weather for Riflemen, had come outside the mill’s sheltering walls to watch the assault.

The rain glittered like polished blades. It seethed down vertically. Water flowed in great swathes off the battlements to flood the inner ditch. A bolt of lightning, sudden and scaring, cracked to the east.

The French were a hundred yards away. They shouted their ‘Vive I’Empereur’ in the drumbeat’s pause, but the great shout was drowned by the hammering, silver rain that bounced in fine spray from the scorched and battered stones of the fort.

Sharpe turned. The west wall was ready. He could do no more there. That was his refuge, the place where he must hold the French just long enough to get his men down to the boats. He turned back to see the French skirmishers, red shoulder-wings darkened by rain, running clumsily up the glacis slope. He wondered if Calvet had sent men to the north who might cut between the west wall and the water and so bar the Riflemens’ escape.

The French were nervous now. Some would be hoping that the rain had destroyed every rifle charge, but the veterans would know that even in this rain some guns would spark. They began to hurry, eager to get this first shock over. The skirmishers were spreading on the glacis and the first muskets banged smoke from the lip.

“Charge! Charge!” Calvet roared the words like a challenge as he led his ‘grumblers’, his veterans, through the gap in the glacis.

They charged. The column lost its order now. Some men, the timorous, sheltered in the outer ditch and pretended to fire upwards, but most, the brave, swarmed along the road towards the chaos of stone that was their shattered bridge to revenge.

Sharpe looked at Frederickson. “Now!” Frederickson’s men, ripping rags from locks, stood to fire directly over the breach’s summit, while from the ramparts every man who could fire a weapon knelt or stood. “Fire!”

Perhaps half the guns fired, while on the other weapons the leather-gripped flints sparked on to damp powder. Sharpe’s rifle kicked back, then he was shouting at the men who guarded the broken edge of the battlement.

The lead torn from the church roof and not needed for bullets had been piled on the ramparts with cobblestones, dead howitzer shells, and broken masonry. It was all hurled down at the attackers. The French muskets were as useless as the defenders’ rifles. One carefully protected charge of dry powder might spark, but once that was gone it was hopeless to think of reloading in this rain.

Riflemen stood and hurled missiles and the attack faltered. There were dead at the breach’s foot, put there by Frederickson’s volley, but then the living, roared on by Calvet, surged over the bodies. A lead sheet sliced into a man’s skull and a howitzer shell bounced on the stones.

“On! On!” Calvet was alive. He did not know how many had died, but he felt the old joy of battle and his huge voice plucked men up the ramp of stones. He swung his sword at the cheval-de-frise and staggered sideways as a cobblestone hit his skull. “The Emperor! The Emperor!”

A tide of men scrambled on the breach. An officer, armed with an expensive percussion cap pistol that was proof against the rain, fired upwards and a Rifleman toppled from the ramparts and was torn apart by bayonets.

“Push!” Calvet was shoving the cheval-de-frise forward, forcing a gap. A howitzer shell, thrown from the ramparts, hit his left arm, stunning it, but he could see a space at the end of the spiked beam and he jumped for it. His sword-arm was still good and he pointed the way as he breasted the breach’s summit. “Charge!”

,The flood of men, pushed from behind and desperate to escape the rain of missiles from above, flowed over the breach.

Harper watched them. He saw the general, saw the gaudy golden braid and plucked the rag away from the seven-barrelled gun’s lock. He pulled the trigger and three Frenchmen were hurled backwards on the inner face of the breach. Calvet, who had been leading the dead men, survived.

“Fire!” Frederickson, given the blunderbusses, bellowed the order and three of the six guns belched their stone scraps at the enemy.

A Frenchman was impaled on one of the bayonets jammed between stones and, despite his desperate screams, was trampled further on to the blade by his comrades. Other men, sobbing and struggling, had been forced on to the cheval-de-frise that now lay canted on the breach’s inner face. Yet most men survived to leap down on to the courtyard’s cobbles.

“Back! Back!” Frederickson’s men were not there to contest the breach, but to guard the ramp. They went backwards, appalled by the scrabbling tide of men who surged into the fortress.

Sharpe, seeing that the breach was lost, blew a two-fingered whistle. “Back! Back!” His men ran down the ramparts.

At the foot of the stone ramp, facing the collapsed gateway, was the single cannon. Its capsquare was broken, but the barrel was charged with the last of the garrison’s dry powder and rammed with metal scraps, stone fragments, and rusty nails. A trail of powder had been trickled into its vent, then covered with a patch of oilcloth.

Harper stood by the cannon. Beside it, sheltered in a hole beneath the stone ramp, was a torch made of twisted straw, rags and pitch. He plucked it out and whirled it through the air so that the flames were fanned into a sudden, rain-sizzling blaze.

“Now!” Frederickson, halfway up the ramp with his men, shouted the order.

Harper plucked the oilcloth free and jammed the burning concoction of dripping pitch and straw on to the venthole. He saw the powder spark and threw himself sideways.

The cannon fired.

It recoiled viciously and the barrel, ramming with all the force of the dirty powder inside it, tore itself off the carriage, but not before the charge, spreading like duckshot, emptied itself into the courtyard.

The stones and metal scraps flayed into the French. A shower of blood momentarily rivalled the rain, then the barrel clanged down on to the carriage’s right wheel, snapping spokes as if they were matchwood, and Harper was scrambling up the ramp and shouting for his axe.

Men screamed in the yard. Men had been blinded, eviscerated, torn ragged. Calvet had instinctively thrown himself flat and now listened to the horror about him. “Charge!” He scrambled up. “Charge!”

He could see how few defenders were left to face him, but at least they were. Riflemen, the British elite, and he would capture these last few as a token of his victory. “Charge!”

Men, made courageous by the paucity of the defenders and roused to gallantry by the general’s voice, obeyed. From among the wounded and the dead, from the clinging smoke of the cannon, a pelting, yelling mass of men emerged. Calvet led them.

“Now!” Frederickson had the last seven lime-barrels at the head of the ramp. Sergeant Rossner threw one, it bounced, split open, then, spewing powder that was turned to instant whitewash by the rain, slammed into the first rank of Frenchmen. A man screamed as the barrel pinned him against the broken gun-carriage and as limewash flayed at his eyes.

Frederickson looked behind him. Sharpe’s men, using the dry cover of the citadel where captured French ammunition had been stored, were holding the southern wall. Minver’s men, with agonizing slowness, were being rowed towards the Thuella.

A second lime barrel thumped down the slope, then a third. More Frenchmen were scrambling on to the walls to attack the citadels, but the men in those small fortresses had the last dry charges and they forced the attackers into the cover of the embrasures.

“Now!” A fourth barrel bounced and struck a man full in the chest.

A pistol fired from the courtyard and Rossner grunted as the bullet hit his arm.

“Go!” Frederickson pushed him towards the sea. “Go!”

More Frenchmen were coming, clawing at the ramp, fighting past the smashed gun carriage, over the broken barrel strakes, and across the bodies of their own wounded. The foot of the ramp was a grotesque mixture of whitewash and blood like a painter’s accident.

“Now!” The fifth barrel went, then the sixth.

Sharpe had come to the head of the ramp. He could see Minver’s men scrambling up the Tkuella’s side, but the French could not be held for long. Some were trying to climb the inner wall to the ramparts, using debris from the burned offices as scaling ladders, and Sharpe ran back to stop them. He drove his sword down once, twice, and a man screamed as the blade raked his face.

“Now!” The last barrel was thrown by Harper. It did not bounce, but flew full tilt to smash into a fresh charge of men. The Thuella’s boats had still not started their return journey.

“Swords!” Frederickson shouted the order.

The French, exhilarated by their victory in the breach and seeing that no more barrels could plunge into their ranks, charged. A single rank of Riflemen, sword-bayonets in place, awaited them.

Then Harper broke the line.

With a shout that filled the whole courtyard with its echo, Patrick Harper charged down the stone slope. He carried the great, bright-bladed axe, and in his veins there was the keening of a thousand Irish warriors. He was shouting in his Gaelic now, daring the French to have at him, and the leading Frenchmen dared not.

Harper was six feet four, a giant, and had muscles like a mainmast’s cables. He did not attack cautiously, feeling for his enemy’s weakness, but screamed his challenge at the full run. The axe took two men with its first blow then Harper turned the blade as though it weighed less than a sword, brought it back, blade dripping blood, while his voice, chanting its ancient language, drove the Frenchmen backwards.

A French captain, eager for glory and knowing that the ramp must be taken, lunged, and the axe-blade slit his belly open to the rain. Harper screamed triumph, defying the French, daring them to come to challenge his blade. He stopped a few feet from the bottom of the ramp, victorious, and the rain dripped pink from the broad-bladed axe that he held in his right hand. He laughed at the French.

“Sergeant!” Sharpe bellowed. “Patrick!”

The longboats, at last, were pushing back to the shore.

“Patrick!” Sharpe cupped his hands. “Come back!”

Harper shouldered the axe. He turned, disdaining to run, and walked slowly up the stone ramp to where Frederickson waited. He turned there and stared down into the courtyard. The officer with the percussion pistol, its barrel charged with powder from a dry horn, slipped a percussion cap over the gun’s nipple, but Calvet, who recognized bravery when he saw it, shook his head. That Rifleman, Calvet thought, should be in the Imperial Guard.

“Citadels!” Sharpe’s shout was sudden in the odd silence that followed Harper’s lone attack. “Retreat! Retreat!”

The Riflemen who had guarded the extremities of the west wall scrambled from their strongholds and ran to the ladders.

Calvet, seeing it, knew his enemy was finished. “Charge!”

“Back! Back! Back!” Sharpe pushed his men away. Now the French could have the fort, but now came the worst moment, the difficult moment, the end of Sharpe’s battle and the race for the boats.

The Riflemen had no time to queue at the ladders, instead they jumped from the walls and fell headlong in the sand. Sharpe waited, standing in one of the embrasures with his sword drawn. Harper came to his side but Sharpe snarled at him to go.

The French charged over the bodies of the dead. They wanted revenge, but found an empty rampart. Empty but for the one officer, sword drawn, whose face was like death. That face checked them for a few seconds, enough to let Sharpe’s men scramble towards the sea’s edge.

Then Sharpe turned and jumped.

The landing knocked all the breath from him. He pitched forward, rifle falling from his shoulder, and his face hit the wet sand.

A hand grabbed his collar and hauled him up. Harper’s voice shouted, “Run!”

Sharpe’s mouth was filled with gritty sand. He spat. He stumbled on the body of one of the Frenchmen dumped on this strip of sand the day before, sprawled, then ran again. His shako was gone. Frenchmen were standing on the ramparts above while to his right, from the north, the cavalry appeared.

The two longboats, oars rising and falling with painful slowness, inched towards the small breaking waves of the channel’s beach. The first Riflemen were in the water, wading towards the boats, reaching for them.

Cornelius Killick, in the leading boat, bellowed an order and Sharpe saw the oars back, saw the clumsy boats swing, and he knew that Killick was turning the craft so that the wider sterns would face the shore.

“Form line!” Frederickson was shouting.

Sharpe swerved towards the shout, pawing sand from his eyes. Thirty Riflemen were bumping into a crude line at the very edge of the sea. Sharpe and Harper joined it.

“Front rank kneel! Present!” Frederickson, as if on a battlefield, faced the cavalry with two ranks that bristled with blades. The leading horseman, an officer, leaned from his saddle to swing his sabre, but the light blade clanged along the sword bayonets like a child’s stick dragged on iron palings.

“Back! Back!” Sharpe shouted it.

The small line marched backwards, step by step, into the sea. Waves drove at their calves, their thighs, and the shock of the cold water reached for their groins.

Horsemen spurred into the sea. The horses, frightened by the blades and waves, reared.

“Come on, you bastards!” Killick shouted. “Swim!”

“Break ranks!” Sharpe shouted it. “Go!” He stayed as rearguard. His rifle encumbered him and he let it drop into the water.

A horseman swung a sabre at Sharpe and the Rifleman’s long sword, used with both Sharpe’s hands, broke the man’s forearm. The Frenchman hissed with pain, dropped his sabre, then his horse jerked back towards dry land. Another horseman was twisting his sabre’s point in a Rifleman’s neck. There was blood, splashes, and more yellow-teethed horses plunging into the foam. Harper, still holding the axe, swung it at the horseman who sheered clumsily away while the body of a Rifleman was tugged by the tide. Harper dragged the body towards the boats, not knowing that the man was already dead.

The infantry had jumped from the ramparts and shouted at the cavalry to make way. Sharpe, teeth snarling, dared them to come. He taunted them. He stepped towards them, wanting one of them to try, just one.

“Sir!” a voice shouted from behind. “Sir!”

Sharpe stepped backwards and, seeing it, the French attacked.

A sergeant led them. He was old in war, toughened by years of campaigning, and he knew the Englishman would lunge.

Sharpe lunged. The Frenchman jerked his musket aside, parrying, and bellowed his victory as he thrust forward.

He was still shouting as Sharpe’s sword, which had been twisted over the bayonet’s stab, punctured his belly. Sharpe turned the blade, pushing, and the blood spewed into the breaking foam as the blade seemed to be swallowed by the big belly. Sharpe stepped back, jerked the sword, and the blade came free in a welter of new blood.

“Sir!”

He went backwards. Another horseman drove into the water and Sharpe swung his blade at the horse’s head, it reared, then a man came from his other side, an officer in a darker uniform, and Sharpe turned, parried a clumsy thrust, and drew his sword back for the killing thrust.

“Not him! Not him!” Killick shouted it.

Sharpe checked his thrust.

Lassan, knowing that he would not die on this day of rain and savagery, lowered his sword into the water. “Go.”

Sharpe went. He turned and plunged further into the sea. The longboats were already pulling away. Men clung to the transom of the nearest boat while other men, safely in the craft, reached hands and rifles towards him.

A pistol bullet spat in a plurne beside Sharpe’s face. He was up to his chest now, half wading and half swimming, and he reached with his left hand, lunged, and caught an outstretched rifle barrel.

“Pull!” Killick shouted. “Pull!”

A last cavalryman charged into the sea, but an oarblade, slapped down on to the water, frightened the horse. The French, their muskets made useless by rain, could only watch.

Sharpe clung to the rifle with his left hand. The weapon’s foresight dug into his palm. The sword in his right hand was dragging him down, as was the heavy scabbard. He kicked with his feet, water slopped into his mouth and he gagged.

“Pull! Pull! Pull!” Killick’s voice roared over the clanking of the Thuella’s windlass that dragged the anchor clear of the channel’s silt. The sails were dropping into the small wind and the Thuella was stirring in the water.

The boats bumped on the ship’s side and men pushed the Riflemen towards the deck. Someone took Sharpe’s collar and hauled him dripping and heavy into the longboat. “Up!”

A ladder was built into the ship’s side. Sharpe, unsteady in the rocking longboat, thrust his sword into his scabbard that squirted water as the blade went home. He reached for the ladder, climbed, then American hands hauled him on to the Thuella‘s deck. He had swallowed sea-water and, with a sudden spasm, he vomited it on to the scrubbed deck. He gasped for breath, vomited more, then lay, chest heaving, in the scuppers.

He heard cheers, German and Spanish and British cheers, even American cheers, and Sharpe twisted, looked through a gunport, and saw the coastline already sliding past. French gunners were wrestling the twelve-pounders through wet sand, but too late and to no avail. The longboats were being towed at ropes’ ends, the Thuella’s wet sails were filling with a new, easterly breeze, and the French were left behind, impotent.

They had escaped.